Launch HN: Hatchways (YC S19) – Internships Instead of Interviews - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
My name is Jaclyn Ling and I'm the co-founder/CEO of Hatchways (https://hatchways.io). We make it easier to get your first job.
More specifically, we help talented engineers who may not shine in traditional recruitment processes (resume + multiple interview processes) get opportunities to prove themselves on the job. We do this by using a practical skill-based assessment as a proxy for the resume, and then matching them to startups for paid internships, as a way to reduce full-time interview processes.
As a new grad without relevant work experience, or as a career shifter without a relevant degree, getting a first job is very painful. You spend months preparing for interviews that don't reflect the job, you send hundreds of resumes out that go unanswered, and when you actually get interviews, getting through five rounds successfully is like a lottery.
I've been interested in this problem for a long time because of my own early struggles trying to get a job. I graduated from a foreign university (Canada), had a subpar GPA, and I don't perform well in high-pressured style interviews. Somehow, I networked my way into getting interviews at all my "dream" companies. But I got rejected at every one of them and to this day, I've never gotten a job I've interviewed for. It deeply affected my confidence.
However, since then I was fortunate enough to start and exit a startup. We built a fashion app that made personal outfit recommendations based on your likes, which eventually evolved into a chatbot that provided recommendations to hundreds of thousands of teens. We got acquired, and when I was working for the company that acquired us, I finally realized that the interviews I'd failed at hadn't reflected my ability to do well on the job.
Mainstream hiring processes are biased towards those who went to great schools, had high GPAs, are native-English speaking, have worked at brand name companies, are extroverts and great networkers, etc. But there are so many talented people who don't fit that profile. We're excited to work on ways of hiring that give them a better chance.
Our practical skill-based assessments simulate tasks they'd actually be doing on the job (e.g. project-based work). Engineers on our end review the job seeker's code to pick up signals that are important for on-the-job such as: ability to follow a spec, code quality and how quickly the task is completed. An employer pays 90% of the cost only when a full-time hire is made, so ensuring that candidates have job-ready skills is crucial for us. We've found that it works to give people the opportunity to prove themselves on the job: 80% of our internships have resulted in full-time employment immediately after.
So far, we have helped talented engineers get software jobs who would have otherwise been overlooked: baristas and Uber drivers turned engineers, candidates with no local experience (from Turkey, India, Russia, Ethiopia, Brazil etc.), and those with non-CS degrees (linguistics, philosophy, economics, MBA's, dentistry, mechanical engineering etc.)
I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas about how we can improve this system and how we can best help talented people who shine once they get a chance to prove themselves. We would love to hear your personal experiences in this space too. Thank you! <comment><USER2> I seriously hope you folks succeed. All the luck to you! Here's my non- traditional story:

I've worked on my own personal projects for 10 years, always looking for new challenges. I've dropped out of college after 2 years since it was crystal clear to me that I learned _much_ more when working on my own stuff. I would learn new things in college, but at a much slower pace. I guess it was useful to learn calculus...

Anyway. Financially I never needed a fully paying job, so I could spend all my time doing my own research. From web security to docker to bsd to aws/gcp, I've managed to gather a lot of personal experience on many tools. Similarly, I went from PHP to Erlang to Haskell and back. For a brief period I even managed my own team!

But now, 10 years later, I just started looking for my first job and boy, do I realize my resume is empty! I have some code on github but none of my projects are famous or noteworthy. So far, most jobs I've applied for said I'm not qualified, and I don't blame them if all they looked at was my CV.

To solve this I'm working on (yet another) project, a distributed KV storage with built-in MQ capabilities, automatic clustering and transparent sharding, eventual consistency through the use of operation-based crdts, written in my favorite language for distributed systems (Elixir). Hopefully I can use it to get a job, but I think proving one's experience and knowledge should be easier.

Interestingly, if I had gotten a job when I dropped out (~6 years ago), I would probably be a specialist/senior engineer on some specific tool, but I wouldn't have the range of experience I do today.

Sorry if I digress, just wanted to share my non-traditional "case" (to be fair, you asked for it!)

<comment><USER3> In my experience, you don't need to be a major contributor to an open source project to gain notice. I've only 3-5 minor contributions (work rules generally preclude me from being more active)

While my contributions haven't been large in terms of LOC, nor have I added new features, I have identified, debugged and supplied patches for bugs.

I mean, I did this out of self interest, of course.

A defect in a certain DB lib on bulk copying with nulls would fail (uninitialized memory in the C portion of the lib). That took about 6 weeks of on again/off again attention. Debugging a C module in Python is a bit of a pain in the ass.

Fixing 64-bit compatibility in a Windows ODBC C++ wrapper was another. This was a pain because it required a line by line audit to make sure the correct types were used on every ODBC call.

A problem with some inline assembly using rtdsc as a highres timer reporting 200 years had elapsed in a few minutes. This took a long while to figure out and only stumbled into the cause of the bug. I was using the timer to measure socket timeouts. We were supposed to timeout after 30 seconds, but randomly, the timeout would trigger immediately. Stumbled into it because we were using the same timer to measure database queries. Found it odd that my logs were reporting queries were taking more than 200 years to complete, as I sat there reading the logs and seeing them complete.

Another was an issue of file handles being, no pun intended, mishandled on a .Net logging lib. I forget the details on this one. Dont think the file was being properly closed at exit?

Reported an issue with Boost DateTime overflowing on certain arithmetic situations. Coworker found the issue, but I narrowed down the issue, figured out a solution and reported upstream. Finding the wrong typeset in a template zoo like Boost is an arduous task.

I'm sure there's more I've forgotten, but my contributions haven't been much in the way of LOC. My contributions have been in the hours spent and expertise in finding the typically 1 or 2 lines that are wrong.

Having experience like that on a resume (and being able to talk knowledgeably about what you did and how you do it) do open doors. Having "found and fixed obscure bug" in a widely used OSS lib is nearly just as valuable as churning out lots of OSS code. Probably more noticeable if you fix bugs in an OSS project that lots of people/companies use, rather than churning out tons of lines in a project almost no one has heard of or uses (beyond the authors).

Edit: spelling

Addendum: providing bug fixes for 3rd party libs also demonstrates an ability to work with and understand code written by someone else, which is a valuable skill in of itself.

<comment><USER4> I would add one more thing: if you contribute patches to an OSS, you are already working with people who can help you find a job and skip the HR part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recommend time-boxing how much time candidates will have to spend on your process. People coming from an alternate career path still have to pay their bills through their current job and tend to the same responsibilities as anyone else. Asking them to do days of unpaid homework ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16874015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16874015)) may not be a luxury they can afford.

For the take-home portion of your assessment, consider paying the candidates for their time at an entry-level annualized salary. Many companies would balk at this idea because it is more expensive, but it demonstrates respect for the candidate.

Looking at the website, I don't see many details about what the assessment actually includes. I think it would help to be forthright about the structure of the assessment. Does Hatchways or the employer determine what the assignment is? How does one create a rubric for scoring a submission, and how is quality assurance conducted on the effectiveness of these rubrics?

I think it is only fair to tell candidates what area of expertise they are going to be tested on a week ahead of time, so they can prepare as they see fit. As for this bit: "ability to follow a spec, code quality and how quickly the task is completed" \- it would make sense that different companies would place different weights on each of these factors, given that some of these parameters can often be at odds with each other.

Also - a particularly tricky area: how do you give feedback to candidates? Do you help them succeed? Is it enough that Hatchways gives the feedback, and not the employer to avoid lawsuits? Having done some take-homes in the past that were rejected, I received absolutely no feedback on what could have been done better or what was missing. Candidates who continually to struggle and don't pass any of the interviews aren't necessarily morons or inept - they just need someone to point them in the right direction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points and comments here. Few things to add: -one big benefit for our candidates doing our take-home project is that they only need to do one assessment that can they qualify them for dozens of companies. Rather than have to do 5-6 different take-homes for different employers. -Before a candidate begins an assessment we are very upfront with what knowledge and skills you will need before you start. If there is any way we can make this clearer, we'd definitely be open to feedback -At the moment, it is quite manual how we match employers to the right candidates (we usually do this by fully understanding what the candidate will be doing on the job and helping them prioritize the right skills based on that) -We try our best to give feedback to every candidate that comes on to our platform- regardless if they make it through the assessment or not. In particular, candidates who do interviews with employers we are very active with asking employers for feedback on a candidates interview performance so we can deliver more candid feedback than they could give.

Very much agree that candidates these days are not receiving candid feedback that they can action on after they interview with employers, and this is a whole other issue that needs to be solved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey Jaclyn, glad to hear you're tackling this space - one that I'm passionate about. Congrats on the launch!

"As a new grad without relevant work experience, or as a career shifter without a relevant degree, getting a first job is very painful" \- Absolutely true.

I've spent a good chunk of the past few months mentoring a cousin to help him get his first job in Tech. He studied computer science, has a great GPA, can actually build stuff, but went to a not so well known college in California and didn't have any top tech company internships under his belt.

Very few companies responded to his applications (< 1% positive response) and he really had to hustle his way to get noticed (cold emails, milking his and my personal network for introductions to engineering managers, etc).

Companies like TripleByte seem to have shifted more towards the senior software engineer category, so I see tremendous value in targeting entry-level positions.

Questions: How do you plan to effectively source candidates that are able to pass your assessment? I think an interesting starting point would be to work with graduates of not well-known computer science programs. I think people generally under-estimate the difficulty of getting foot in the door at reputed Tech companies, when you didn't study at a top 10 CS program, and they would probably be the closest group, on average, to passing your technical assessment.

In my conversations with fast-growing companies in the Bay, I got the sense that the demand for senior software engineers far outstrips demand for entry- level / internship positions. Have you noticed the same trend, and as a result are you working mostly with already established larger companies?

Congrats again. Always happy to see more people tackle this problem. We need to create a more accessible, meritocratic pathway to work in Tech.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there, thank you for sharing your cousin's story.

I think you're definitely right that a great place to target are programs outside of top 10 CS programs. I do believe we could bring the biggest benefit to these new grads. Do you have any suggestions on how to best reach these types of candidates?

We have also seen similar sentiment toward senior software engineers. I think something we've also noticed though is that there is such a demand for talent, that we've actually been able to convince employers to hire high potential candidates with no experience even though they were initially looking for a candidate with 2-3 years of experience.

Today, we actually focus on startups that have a challenge hiring themselves (i.e. because they lack large budgets and/or brand name), and so hiring "undervalued" talent is actually a great way for them to attract and hire talent!

<comment><USER6> > Do you have any suggestions on how to best reach these types of candidates?

Perhaps a combination of creating high quality content hyper targeted towards this audience to help them identify companies to work at, prepare for interviews and how to apply & reaching out to programming student organizations, and CS administrations at these schools to set up workshops, etc. Attending career fairs could also be fruitful (or even better, setting up great virtual career fairs for these schools)

College administrators are incentivized to work with you - the more of their students get placed at companies, the more valuable their program becomes in the eyes of future students. E.g. my college used to heavily market av. starting salary and % students placed at graduation.

> so hiring "undervalued" talent is actually a great way for them to attract > and hire talent!

This is interesting. I buy that startups without a recruiting brand want to hire undervalued candidates, but I'm skeptical of their demand to hire undervalued AND entry-level candidates / interns, given their stage where they likely need more execution power with less time spent on mentorship / ramping up. Curious to see how targeting this segment pans out in the long-term, but I'm sure with effective sourcing and screening, you can shift the company segment if need be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great ideas-- never thought about virtual career fairs, but that sounds very interesting.

You're definitely right that undervalued AND entry-level candidates is a hard sell most of the time-- but more employers need to start giving out work experience rather than just expecting 2-3 years+ work experience. So hopefully we can find more unique ways to help solve this "experience gap" problem as we grow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks like a great way to help people without a traditional background, I love it!

One question: Do you help employers pick an appropriate salary that is not abusive but reflects the candidates lack of experience? I ask because I myself hired a career transitioner and I had no idea what a fair wage was to pay her, and neither did she. We eventually settled on a number that worked for me and her, but I still have no idea if it's fair.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do help employers gage appropriate salaries. We place candidates into tier levels based on a.) how well they did on our online assessment and b.) if they have any relevant work experience-- the tier levels relate to salaries that would be appropriate. This also allows employers and candidates to have the right expectations before walking into interviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I always thought the tech industry would benefit from probationary hiring/apprenticeships to help counter the challenges in technical interviewing - basically this same approach as internships but for experienced professionals.

Would you expand your program to include those experienced in the industry who don't (or won't) perform well in traditional tech interviews?

<comment><AUTHOR> We believe that trial employment at any level is effective and beneficial to both sides. For candidates it allows them to get a better feel of the work before committing, and for employers, you get a better sense of the person's skill level in your environment. We personally have hired senior engineers doing part-time trials, and this has been effective for us. This is something we could possibly expand into in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really wish you all the best. A large part of our team at RedCarpet was hired this way. The biggest thing that it helped was to not depend on signalling from the big name universities in India (the IIT, etc).

We are proud that we did this and is now part of our company culture. The internship program is core to our people ops and everyone in the company participates.

We call it the ROCKS program - [https://www.redcarpetup.com/rocks/](https://www.redcarpetup.com/rocks/)

Today our success rate is 100% placement - either at RedCarpet or other startups in India. From what i hear, our internship program is now used as signalling by others (without depending on college name branding)

Joke : we internally describe the ROCKS program as " _its like Lambda School, except people get paid to learn and get a job_ ". Feel free to steal that ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate your comment! Will look more in-depth and perhaps reach out in the near future to pick your brain further (probably after the yc demo day rush though :P)

Great website and mission. Wishing you all the best too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is great - what you guys are doing particularly hits home for me.

I graduated out of UC Riverside, with a degree in Accounting, and if any of you are Asian-American in California, you'd know it's infamous nickname: University of Chinese Rejects. I'm willing to bet that my GPA was even lower than yours Jaclyn.

I managed to finagle my way into a UX/UI position at a major consulting firm and before that STRUGGLED to get nearly anybody to take me seriously. There's a lot of parallels to draw with Design to Engineering, most employers there are already making hiring decisions based on portfolio and aptitude, rather than grades. But still, the same platitudes of: great undergrad/masters, brand name companies, extroverts, etc all ring true. You're often focused on gaming the interview process and saying the right things, rather than being assessed as a measurement of your actual work output.

Anyway, the only way I got noticed was doing what you guys are offering as a much more legitimized service. I had to create major projects for myself that would demonstrate I had some literacy in how work would actually be done in the field, cold email + network with a bunch of companies just to get a foot in the door, create a portfolio without any help.

I think I'm one of the few that got extremely lucky in the end, but it really warms my heart that you guys are providing a service that really formalizes the career shifting process. I'll be rooting for your guys' success.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your story. Glad to hear you were able to overcome the traditional barriers. Great idea to explore design as an industry we can expand into in the future!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems to have tremendous potential. I like the conscious effort to de- bias the system away from initial indicators (like school, GPA, etc.). Thank you for doing this!

Question -- is there the possibility of an income-share model here? i.e. Hatchways does due diligence in initial assessment + matching and even pays for the candidate's internship at the company, and makes money only when the candidate gets a full-time offer as a pre-agreed upon percentage of the candidate's salary (for the first N months say).

<comment><AUTHOR> We definitely think there is a huge value add to do an ISA after an internship-- which can further show our conviction of our candidates to employers if we are willing to up-front salaries.

We have in the past been able to receive government funding for some candidates that proved really positive for both candidates (received opportunities that they may otherwise not have had) and employers (to take more chances)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thanks for starting this Jaclyn.

I come from a non-traditional background. More than 10 years ago I started a niche community that grew at its height over 1.5M/monthly visitors. Everything custom built in PHP.

Then I co-founded a SaaS analytics service which we ran for 5 years.

In 2017 I started a solo project while learning Node.js, Vue.js, Postgres, microservices, to keep myself updated.

I decided that I wanted to join a team after going solo for a while and to progress my professional career. However having no CS degrees I lack foundational programming skills. I only know the stuff that I come in contact with so during interviews, sometimes I can't answer seemingly basic programming questions. I always focused on implementation and having limited time, didn't look for the why.

I'm falling between junior and senior experience and I feel companies have no clue what to do with me.

At the moment I'm learning advanced JS concepts, programming paradigms, data structures and algorithms, and plan to open source a project that shows all that. Showing my portfolio with projects is not enough for the roles I'm looking for.

I probably lack interviewing skills. So thanks for creating hatchways, I might use it in the future. From a hiring perspective, hiring full time based on a couple interviews is super risky. I actually like to work freelance/intern before committing myself - culture works in both ways. This is obviously a privileged position if you have time or money.

I like the idea of the hiring manager/interviewer being more of a coach during the process, and tailoring the process towards different personalities/situations.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hey Jaclyn -

I think this is amazing! I'm all for challenging the existing recruiting status quo! I personally found it extremely difficult to pivot out of one industry and trying to break into another. I went through the standard process of getting a degree, doing internships, maintaining GPA, and receiving an offer upon graduation. When I graduated, my target industry essentially cratered, my offer was rescinded, and I was a bit lost. After some research/self-prep, I decided that the tech sector was where I wanted to be. After doing a temp stint in IT admin, some MOOC's, and personal side-projects, I still found it extremely challenging to pivot into. I didn't know what else to do other than to go back to school and basically go through the exact same funnel as before, which is what I ended up doing. This isn't a feasible option for a lot of people and I think one (of many) ways your platform provides value is accessibility.

That being said, I had a few questions from both a candidate's and employer's perspective:

\- How does Hatchaways compete with the timelines of the conventional recruiting method (i.e. ~1-2 months vs your model of interning)?

\- If a candidate realizes that the opportunity may not be a good fit (from his/her side), will Hatchaways connect them with another prospective employer for another Hatchaways recruiting cycle (i.e. internship) once the first one is complete?

\- How does Hatchaways enable employers to assess multiple candidates for the same position at once?

\- Is there a penalty to employers if business needs change halfway through the assessment (i.e. the job that the candidate is being assessed for no longer exists)?

\- How are employers affected when a candidate begins an internship part of the way, only to get a full time job at another company?

Would love to chat more about this and I'm really excited to see where you take this!

Best R

<comment><AUTHOR> I was really touched to read your story. Thank you for sharing your challenges, and particularly around how you felt the only other option was to go back to school just to get the opportunities one would get by being a 'student'.

Here are answers to your questions:

-Most of our candidates will receive an offer in less than a week since we are able to shorten the interview cycle

-Yes definitely-- if a candidate doesn't like where they interned at, they are always welcome to come back on to our platform to get matched with more employers for a new internship

-We usually match employers with 2-4 candidates we think suit what they are looking for. We get them to interview them back to back (similar to the Waterloo co-op system) so they can evaluate and interview fairly, as well as make a decision quickly (hopefully by the end of that day)

-There is a penalty if an employer provides an offer to a candidate and in between the time they make an offer and the start date-- they pay half of the entire internship salary to the candidate

-Good last question-- this has not happened yet with us. Most employers are actually quite open and let our candidates know that they are allowed to interview and even accept other offers. I believe that most employers at the end of the day only want to hire candidates who want to be work for them, so if they are curious about other companies and want to take another offer, it probably wasn't a good fit to start with!

Thanks so much for your feedback, would love to answer any more questions you might have!

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the quick reply. Had a few more questions, out of curiosity!

\- Does Hatchaways provide support to candidates with regards to salary negotiations? A common method is to have multiple competing offer and it may be difficult for candidates to go through conventional interviews when they are going through the more immersive Hatchaway cycle.

\- Does Hatchaways provide health insurance to candidates while they are in the 'internship-phase' of the recruitment process to full time?

\-- R

<comment><AUTHOR> \- we generally give an average salary to expect depending on your skill level/ experience level, so both the candidate and employer going in with a similar expectation.

-at this time we don't offer health insurance but some of our companies still do during the 'trial phase'. It's something worth thinking about for the future though, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who has been a non-traditional candidate in the past, and also leveraged non-traditional candidates as an employer, this is amazing. Thank you for doing it! I would have used this myself in the past, and I'm confident that both sides of your market will find _huge_ value in this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Really appreciate that you, as a non-traditional candidate, promote non- traditional hiring now that you are an employer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is such a great idea! Thank for you doing this :)

I also came into tech from a non-traditional background and I struggled at the beginning to get my foot in the door. I studied math and econ in school, and even though my passion was writing software, it was hard to start applying without any projects or connections in the field.

To find a job, I spent money on a coding bootcamp post-graduation from college. This seemed like the only option at the time. If there was something like this at the time, I would have rather have gone that route instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your story. I hope your career transition has been rewarding since!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Mainstream hiring processes are biased towards those who went to great schools, had high GPAs, are native-English speaking, have worked at brand name companies, are extroverts and great networkers, etc. But there are so many talented people who don't fit that profile. We're excited to work on ways of hiring that give them a better chance." This really struck a chord. All the best!

</comment><comment><USER17> I just signed up for Hatchways and filled in the profile. The next step says to do the assessment but that completing it within 24 hours would improve chances greatly. It's not clear in the instruction:

\- Has the timer already started or does it start once I click on the [Start] button?

\- Am I coding this in some sort of in-browser environment or am I creating a repository from scratch and submitting some sort of link?

\- If the answer is the second, can I just use my own boilerplate? (ex: I want to do frontend and would just use my own boilerplate of React+SASS+Flow+Redux+etc. and ESLint+Prettier+stylelint)

\- Lastly, my previous question makes me sound more experienced. However, I'm in a very odd spot. CS degree but switched careers to teaching over half a decade ago. I'm trying to switch back now but have no real experience other than being self-taught. I'm basically switching careers. Have you considered partnering with the various development bootcamps to tap their talent pool? How about partnering with online programs?

I think what you're doing is great. I hope you're able to make a real change in the tech industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. To address your questions: -no the timer does not start until you hit 'start' button! -you are coding in your own environment an uploading a zip file once you're done -Naturally, we have definitely a large in flow of candidates from bootcamps. We don't have any formal partnerships yet though. Would love to eventually see how we can partner with online programs as well.

<comment><USER17> Thank you for the quick reply!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is really great, and I wish this existed 6+ years ago while I was transitioning careers. I graduated from a "name brand" university with a Stats degree, but no relevant work experience, and no desire to pursue what most of my classmates were doing (actuarial exams, etc.)

I liked assembling computer hardware when I was younger so I ended up getting my A+ certification and started working in IT help desk, eventually doing more sysadmin work, but still felt pretty unfulfilled. I couldn't afford to take the time off a full-time job to do a bootcamp or something similar, and almost took a combined work/training gig (which would have been something like a 60% pay-cut for 2 years -- in retrospect, this was totally exploitative and a terrible offer, so I was right to be reluctant).

I told my then employer about the offer and leveraged it into a lateral move into their QA dept. After doing the job for a bit and learning the basics, I read online that people were automating the checks I was performing manually. I started spending as much time as I could (and several months of extremely late nights) learning how to code. Once I knew enough Ruby to be dangerous, it was a gateway to new and better offers until I found myself doing regular old Software Engineering. I was lucky to be given some great opportunities and tenacious enough to lateral my way into the career I wanted (at past jobs I would spend a chunk of my time unsanctioned working on various software problems that the company had, only to turn around and say "look what I built, could you give me a job doing this full-time?") but had I not already been in a field where I was working with developers and with computers every day, it would have been 10x harder to make the lateral moves that I did.

Anyway, that's my nontrad story. I think the best time for me to have joined a program like this would have been at the moment where I was doing lots of webdev side-projects but no "real life" problem to solve using the theoretical skills I had gained. It worked out for me in the end, but something like this could have definitely made my circuitous path a lot more straightforward.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is wonderful. Hopefully, I won't need to engage in as many of the obligatory endless internship applications.

Here's a some papercuts I found: some of the longer input field labels flow into the input text on my Moto G5 ("Explain a barrier...", etc.) as do some longer placeholders, and the save notification banners close fits neatly under the chat button. In addition, it took me a moment to parse the education section of skills: it isn't immediately obvious what a current student should put in the fields. It should also be possible to save filled fields in profile despite not filling out all mandatory fields.

</comment><comment><USER20> Love this idea: closing the experience gap which makes it ridiculously hard for many talented graduates to land at their first job.

You should beware of MacDonalds and Starbucks though as soon as they start feel feel shortages ;).

</comment><comment><USER21> More power to you and your kind!

I have been trying this model in India, along with a few of my friends/peers - to hire for junior/intermediate roles and found a great deal of success.

Experience and capability, in a way could be seen as having parts - [ ~30-40% {generic tech, domain, soft-skills}, ~70-60%{contextual knowledge and experience on the product/stack/domain} ]

The former comes from past work experience; the latter part - which is more crucial to achieve successful outcomes from intended role, is gained only on the job.

And thus IMO internship/apprenticeship model works really well.

</comment><comment><USER22> Looks great. Signed up as an employer. I couldn't see it on the site on mobile, but is there any info on pricing or locations covered? (I'm in Chicago)

(And bu signed up I mean I followed the "contact us" CTA)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for signing up! We're still working on the dashboard side for employers so I'll be contacting you shortly to set up a meeting to share more.

High level-- we're trying to appeal to startups so our fees are much more accessible than traditional agency/recruiting fees!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Your story really resonated with me, because of how similar it is to my own. I also graduated from Canada with a subpar gpa, and struggled a lot finding employment. In the end doing grad school in the US is what opened many doors into the tech industry for me, but I wish I hadn't wasted so many years looking for jobs between undergrad and grad school. I think your startup will do a lot of good in the world. Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing and it sucks that you feel you 'wasted' years. I'm glad you found your way into tech and wishing you the best as well :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't mean to be critical of the other startups coming out of YC 2019, but some of the problems they are solving are so niche that they don't even register beyond metropolitan cities like San Francisco.

This is a difficult problem to solve because we've heard 100s of times about how hiring is broken.

The problem also scales beyond software engineering jobs because shitty hiring processes exist across most industries.

I hope you guys succeed, just so that you can show the world that hiring doesn't need to be the shitty (and sometimes elitist) process it has become.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this.

It's a very difficult problem to solve because many employers are stuck in their own ways and going to go to big /enterprise companies and telling them they can't look at resumes if they work with us is usually an easy no for them. But we're hoping that if more and more startups work with us and if we can prove that this model is more effective for growing tech startups than hopefully, the big guys will latch on too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I love this idea. I struggled to get my first job because there seemed to be a "people skills" craze at the time which meant that my coding skills were being less valued by companies. I felt like I was interviewing to be an actor in some of them. So I like the idea of perfecting interviewing to select on what is really required.

1\. How do you compare to Codility which also does the same kind of thing?

2\. How do you convince companies to take on interns?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great questions.

1\. Codility (to my knowledge) skews more short coding challenges, whereas ours are more practical project-based assessments. We're trying to assess "can you build" versus testing computer science concepts 2\. A few things have worked for us. One big thing is to position our candidates as fully capable of receiving full-time offers, but that if they move quicker (via one interview then an internship offer) you can sign with them quicker than they would finish up their full-time interviews, or else they may miss out on great talent. The other, is this "try before you buy" mentality around lowering the risk for full-time hiring. They already do it with students, why can't they do it with non-students?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I would much rather do a day of work than jump through abstract technical tests and non real problems.

You could add a point for each of:

1) quick setup

2) selected a bug and started working on it

3) wrote a test or two

4) solved the bug

Extra points:

5) made the codebase better

6) asked questions

7) etc.

</comment><comment> Pete-Codes Hey Jaclyn I launched a website for bootcamp and self-taught coders last week: [https://www.nocsdegree.com](https://www.nocsdegree.com)

It was top here for a few hours last Tuesday [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20506945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20506945)

So maybe we could team up some way :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Pete this is great! Thanks for sharing. I'll reach out. Would be awesome if there was some way to help each other :)

<comment> Pete-Codes Ooops! Didn't see this. My email is firstname.lastname@example.com :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hello Jaclyn!

Hatchways sounds awesome. I hope you don't mind, but I sent you a message on LinkedIn regarding utilizing Hatchways. I could not PM you on here and my question revolves around a story that I would prefer to be kept private. Huge shoutout to everyone posting their non-traditional stories in this thread, by the way!

I hope to hear back from you, Thanks, and keep doing great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your note on LinkedIn. I hope one day you'll come back and share your non-traditional story as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Glad you're working on this!

I'm an experienced developer from a more traditional background - do you ever foresee the internship serving as a _mutual_ vetting process? I'd love to be able to experience a company from the inside before jumping from candidate to full-time employee.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do think there is huge value in internship/ trial employment at all levels. We've personally hired a senior engineer this way-- she was working full-time and trialed with us for a few hours a week so she could get a better sense of our environment and team, while we could also assess her skills and fit. It worked out great, and hope more employers/candidates can view this process as a mutually beneficial vetting process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hey Jaclyn, congrats on launching this - I think it's a wonderful idea.

Are you based in Canada / Toronto? I'd be happy to meet you and give you some suggestions based on my experience, if you visit the Bay area. My email is my HN username at gmail.

</comment><comment><USER30> If someone from a foreign country, say Norway, contacts you about wanting your help to get a job, do you also help those candidates through the process of getting a green card?

If so, awesome! If not, that's an idea for possible improvement right there :)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is great point! At this time unfortunately, we don't have the capacity to make that happen, but we are looking into partnerships to help make that possible for foreign workers

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is cool, and might be useful to a friend of mine with a non-traditional background. But your company's blog is very focused on Toronto - do you all have relationships with NYC companies?

<comment><AUTHOR> We initially launched this in Toronto and have recently expanded into major US cities like SF and NYC

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hi, I wish you the best of luck. The market skews so hard to seniors, and certain locations prioritize certain schools, it's really amazing.

I hope you expand into Seattle soon.

</comment><comment><USER33> This is wonderful! Do you match with employers that offer visas to potential migrants? I feel like not enough platforms focus on this.

<comment><AUTHOR> In some cases employers we work with are very open to offering visas for potential migrants, but because we mainly focus on startups at the moment this isn't super common (yet!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Finally someone is going to solve one of the major problems of IT matket! Good luck, I'm sure you'll succeed in that!

</comment><comment><USER35> How do you onboard ladies (companies)? This seems like potentially one-sided market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now we mainly onboard employers manually, and hoping to create the other side of the market in the near future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think this is good and would be interested in trying some hiring via you.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great to hear - send us a message at email@example.com and we can set up next steps

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I would like to point out that many people give online assessment tests in groups (cheating). Each person solves one question for the interviewee. That is how most people get jobs. So, assessment tests should be conducted onsite and not online (If possible).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep definitely a fair point. Our assessments are building out full projects (so it's less easy to share answers/ get one person to do one question and another person to do another).

Secondly, we do meet each candidate for a 1-hour virtual call as well just to ensure their skills in person align with those online!

We just know candidates are more comfortable completing assessments in their own environment (which is what they would be doing on the job anyway) so we don't want to dock out points for people who get anxiety for onsite tests.

</comment></comment><comment> Pete-Codes Looks good - glad interns are getting paid!!

</comment><comment><USER38> I love it! Skin in the game.

</comment><comment><USER39> love the website design! adding it to my "Webspiration" folder.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> if a candidate didnt get through the traditional method (including multiple interviews and code assessments) then maybe they're just not the right fit for that specific job...why prolong the process even further?

<comment><USER41> Hatchways thesis is that the traditional method (multiple interviews and code assessments) sucks for screening talent.

Here's an analogy. The current method is like qualifying for a marathon by having candidates run a 100m sprint. A better method is using a half-marathon as the qualifying test. Great marathon runners will probably pass both the 100m sprint and half-marathon tests. That said, some pretty good runners will fail the 100m sprint but pass the half-marathon test with flying colors.

Hatchways is changing the qualifying criteria from 100m sprint to a half- marathon so more people can qualify for the race!

<comment><AUTHOR> Love this analogy. Everyone showcases their skills in different ways, and we definitely want to help more people shine in whatever run they perform best in.</comment></comment></comment>


Logos of the candidate cities for the 2016 Olympics - <AUTHOR> http://www.designer-daily.com/logos-for-the-candidate-cities-for-the-2016-olympics-3041

<comment><USER2> It's surprising how "cold" and professional the Chicago logo feels. I'm definitely a fan of Madrid's logo - IMHO the Olympics needs to focus on unity now moreso than ever. A more "human" logo certainly helps.

Plus the symbolism of the handprint is much more universal than any star or ribbon can be.

<comment><USER3> I think they were going for a fusion of Olympic iconography (the torch) with the Chicago flag ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Chicago> )and a bit of a skyscraper motif.

While the Chicago flag is a bit inside baseball (and probably included solely as a sop to the Chicago political establishment, who intend to own the Olympics as thoroughly as they own everything else that ever came out of Chicago politics), I do think that incorporating a bit of the local flair into the logo is a good design goal. I like Madrid's logo, don't get me wrong, but couldn't it be San Fransisco's logo, or London's logo, or Moscow's logo, etc, _without modification_?

I kind of like Tokyo's -- the ribbon is togetherness but the design is distinctly Japanese. I expect the prominent inclusion of the hinomaru (the red disk in the center of the Japanese flag) probably will get a raised eyebrow or two from some quarters, but the Olympics is not exactly a celebration of anti- nationalism now is it.

<comment><USER4> _I expect the prominent inclusion of the hinomaru (the red disk in the center of the Japanese flag) probably will get a raised eyebrow or two..._

Heh... Check out the 1964 Tokyo Olympics logo: <http://www.sportslogos.net/league.php?id=27>

<comment><USER5> You aren't supposed to use the national flag with the olympic logo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Despite the criticisms of some of these logos (in this thread and elsewhere), I don't think I would be as embarrassed to be from any of these places as the London 2012 logo makes me feel [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/10/All_London_201...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/10/All_London_2012_logos.svg)

<comment><USER7> It's worth mentioning that the bid logo is generally different from the logo of the actual games. London's bid logo was a much more attractive (if less attention-grabbing): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:London_2012_Olympic_Games_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:London_2012_Olympic_Games_bid_logo.jpg)

I'm not sure why they change the logos, given that the final logo is almost always less attractive than the bid logo. In Sydney, frinstance, we had a nice neat bid logo (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sydney2000bid.png>) which for the actual games they decided to unnecessarily complicate with a running man and some boomerangs: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sydney_2000_Logo.svg>

Nothing nearly as bad as London 2012, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's interesting how "typically American" the Chicago logo is. It actually looks rather like a mix between the Los Angeles and Salt Lake City logos.

And in case anyone is curious, historical Summer Olympics logos: <http://www.sportslogos.net/league.php?id=27> And Winter Olympics: <http://www.sportslogos.net/league.php?id=64>

</comment><comment><USER7> All, presumably, very expensive, and mostly pretty bad.

Chicago's is the only one I like -- it's the only one that really tries to sell me the city in question. Looking at it reminds me directly of the best bits of Chicago: it's got a big blue lake and some big shiny buildings, and when looked at from the correct angles it's really pretty. The other logos look pretty much interchangeable (except maybe Rio's, which not having been to Rio I don't understand).

</comment><comment><USER9> Unfortunately, I honestly think that Chicago has the worst logo of them all. But I really do hope they win the bid for the 2016 Olympics.

<comment><USER10> I hope not. Let Tokyo host it. The cost for Chicago and US will be enormous and we will be left with elephant structures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The first version of Chicago's logo was better than the current one, IMHO: <http://www.logoblog.org/wordpress/chicago-olympic-logo-2016/>

The original logo was nixed by the Olympic Committee because it was shaped like a torch, and the torch is "Olympic-related imagery." [http://www.suntimes.com/sports/olympics/389836,CST-NWS- torch...](http://www.suntimes.com/sports/olympics/389836,CST-NWS- torch17.article)

</comment><comment><USER12> Not to be a wet blanket but I don't like the Madrid logo at all. Many see it as a welcoming hand; I see it as a (e.g., policeman) ordering me to stop. It's almost shouting "go away, we don't want you here!". And no, I've nothing to feel guilty about. Well, excluding a strict religious upbringing decades ago.

Still better than London's though.

</comment><comment><USER13> Where is poll?

Chicago's feels great, but I've liked Rio more.</comment>


XMPP IoT Anti-Patterns - <AUTHOR> http://geekplace.eu/flow/posts/2016-07-04-xmpp-iot-antipatterns.html <comment><USER2> I'm still not sure I understand the reason they used XMPP in the first place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe because it scales far better than HTTP polling, and there are ready-made libraries for many platforms?

XMPP is not just an IM protocol, it's also usable (and used) for machine-to- machine communication...

<comment><USER2> I was thinking in terms of something that would fit better in with UDP, for example. A custom HTTP server can scale really well, there's also websockets, raw sockets and a host of other protocols that can use anything from bson, json, protocol buffers, etc.. that would be much lighter than XMPP, in a use case that would mostly be customized data loads.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't want to run an alarm system over UDP, which provides none of the reliability guarantees of TCP, so I'd have to implement it myself.

XMPP classically runs over raw TCP, but can also run over HTTP, and there's a newish proposal for XMPP-over-websocket.

Protobuf, bson, json, etc. are all good building blocks that nonetheless require you to reinvent message/framing semantics. Why not use a premade protocol that already has that figured out, like XMPP, or AQMP, or MQTT?

The vendor in the example had the right idea by picking a protocol designed for this kind of thing, instead of trying to roll their own. They could've used it _better_ (hence the blog post), ie. more idiomatically and over TLS.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft web page is down - <AUTHOR>

Can you reach it ? <comment><USER2> you can always check with [http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/microsoft.com](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/microsoft.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> seems ok here</comment>


Popcorn Time – Watch torrent movies instantly - <AUTHOR> http://getpopcornti.me/?hn <comment><USER2> I clicked "12 years a slave", a movie I have not yet had an opportunity to watch and it started streaming in less than a minute in high quality.

I immediately quit the application as it should not be so easy to benefit from someone else's hard work without compensating them.

Please, movie people, let me pay for this.

You might kill the cinemas, but you'll still get paid.

<comment><USER3> > it should not be so easy to benefit from someone else's hard work without > compensating them.

Nonsense. I benefit from the work of Mozart and feel no need to compensate anyone. There _are_ real issues with funding mechanisms and creative work in a shareable digital world, but we can reject the idea that you should always pay for anything that is beneficial. If you _want_ to give gifts to creative folks you like, you can go ahead.

<comment><USER4> I'm a left of center guy, but this kind of thinking is a very ugly slippery slope. Its not that anyone should always expect to pay for things that are beneficial, its the fact that people who very recently WORKED to create the very thing you are benefiting from should be PAID for their work. If everyone followed your logic, we wouldn't have 12 Years A Slave. The props cost money. The costumes cost money. The cameras cost money. The cameramen's families eat fucking food, which costs money. Please, go out and find for me a quality movie that was made by unpaid volunteers. I haven't found one yet.

<comment><USER5> Did you know walking is the leading cause of taxi cab unemployment? You should really consider the ugly nature of walking next time you decide not to cab it up. Taxis cost money, and their kids eat food.

<comment><USER6> The difference between taking a taxi and walking are significant. For your analogy to work you must alter it in one of two ways:

1\. You hijack the taxi and demand the driver take you to your destination for free. This creates an equivalent or better experience for the consumer at zero or near-zero cost.

2\. Instead of clicking a button and watching 12 Years a Slave, you get a crudely animated version pieced together by drawings crowdsourced from 1st grade students around the nation, and voiced entirely by Gilbert Gottfried.

<comment><USER5> The reason I think my analogy applies is because "pirating" costs cameramen nothing. You can measure their net worth before and after I pirate a movie and it will be the same. The same is not true of bumming a taxi ride.

<comment><USER6> A cameraman's salary is paid by the movie's budget, which is effectively a loan against the projected future earnings of a film.

Sure the cameraman already got paid for the film you just pirated, but if said film doesn't earn enough then the studio will decide to make fewer films or go bankrupt, either of which could cost the cameraman their job and significantly reduce future earning potential.

<comment><USER7> But if the movie wasn't worth any money to said person in the first place, then maybe it isn't such a big loss. Maybe some just do not value cinema entertainment very much even though they may watch a movie.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely. Certainly the hypothetical cameraman has no inherent right to be paid to do whatever they want to do, I only assert that the so-called utopian pirate market is incapable of sustaining cinema without drastic changes to the business.

Not to say those changes aren't currently necessary, only that if _everyone_ chose to pirate rather than pay then all of Hollywood would likely just shut down rather than keep throwing $100+m AAA blockbusters into a financial abyss.

<comment><USER8> Hollywood shutting down would not be a huge loss to the world. Movies of cultural value could still be funded and then be made available to the public.

<comment><USER6> That's a highly debatable point. People's definitions of cultural value differ wildly, and the sort of violence and humor that many people find entertaining would be difficult to justify seeking public funding for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you look at this file here: [https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn- app/blob/master/js/t...](https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn- app/blob/master/js/tracking.js)

It sends usage data to Google Analytics. I can see how this can translate into you getting caught. Be careful.

Even if you don't have a 'trackingId' set it still sends GET requests to [http://google.com/](http://google.com/)

<comment><USER10> Add this to your /etc/hosts

       127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com
       127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
       127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com

<comment><USER11> I use SomeoneWhoCares.org:

       curl http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

<comment><USER12> Well that's an incredibly dangerous command to run without thinking.

<comment><USER13> Just curious about what could go wrong (assuming I've quickly skimmed the file)?

<comment><USER14> Quickly skimming the file no longer counts as "running without thinking" but even then, if the server sent a different file to browsers than it does to curl...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> XBMC torrent has been out there for a while [http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174736](http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174736)

It's free software [https://github.com/steeve/xbmctorrent](https://github.com/steeve/xbmctorrent) and uses libtorrent-rasterbar through [https://github.com/steeve/libtorrent- go](https://github.com/steeve/libtorrent-go)

<comment><USER16> Yes, but this one aims for nice interface and simplicity - install and start watching. For people who are not tech savy this app will win.

<comment><USER17> People who are not tech savvy want to watch movies on a television or a tablet, not a PC.

<comment><USER18> RASPMC and a Raspberry Pi. Takes like 3 seconds to get setup and is easier to get going than a DVR. My parents have no issues using XBMC on my Raspberry Pi that I left back home.

<comment><USER19> Ex-RaspBMC user here. I used it for a while, but honestly, that interface running on the pi's ARM processor is awful.

I know the pi was created to be an educational tool, not a media device, but therein lies the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My ideal product is the Netflix interface with, essentially, every movie and television show ever made. I imagine there are a lot of other people out there who also wish that product existed. It's hard to say how much I would pay for it, but I'm currently spending somewhere in the neighborhood of $150/month on a collection of services (Netflix, Time Warner, Usenet) that, in the end, only provide a very poor approximation of that ideal.

This product is the closest I've seen to matching that vision. So despite its very obvious illegality, I appreciate the authors' efforts to try and push the UX boundaries around content viewing. Hopefully instead of Hollywood suing the pants off of the creators, they'll use it as a template for what might be possible if they could collectively get their shit together.

<comment><USER21> I've been saying the same thing for years. My hope is a company like Spotify or Rdio will lead the effort in this. The biggest obstacle is actually getting licensing rights, but honestly, I would pay so much for the service.

That said, I think the cable companies would just jack the rates on internet service to compensate for their dwindling cable usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Downloading copyrighted material may be illegal in your country. Use at your > own risk.

Have we seriously just stopped considering the ethical implications of such things? At least these sorts of sites used to _pretend_ they were for things like "public domain movies" and "personal backups."

<comment><USER23> That question has been answered: we have had plenty of piracy for years now -- and do we still have plenty of film/TV/music/book production? Yes!

So piracy (at least, as we have known it) is not harmful, in fact it seems almost certainly beneficial economically -- more goods are more widely available.

<comment><USER24> Many in the music industry who've seen how it looks now vs before MP3s and high bandwidth came along would disagree.

<comment><USER25> Capital-I Industry, perhaps. But I argue that it's because it's a lot harder to sell garbage albums with just one or two hit songs when you can go to Bandcamp and find a better artist, preview a whole album, and buy it for $5.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Stream for torrents is extremely damaging to the swarm, specially for new torrents. It breaks the protocol and may end up killing itself. Picture a case of major success for this: At Prime Time there is a rush of people streaming from a torrent, acquiring the same pieces of the torrent without servers to counterbalance the upload speed of people with the complete files can't stream the file in real time to a few people who in their turn can't replicate it fast enough to lots of people.

<comment><USER27> Do you have a demonstration of that effect? I'm not buying it from the words.

With typical torrent use, you have to wait the entire download time before you can watch anything because the pieces are randomly selected. But adding streaming just means you have to bias toward the early pieces just enough to have a decent buffer. After that, you can still be random.

The case of prime time seems to be better for this approach, not worse. People still won't all start at the exact same time. The early arrivals will all replicate the early pieces, beefing up the ability of the swarm to get the pieces everybody wants.

I haven't looked at the code, but it seems to me that as long as it's flexible about the amount of time it takes to fill its initial buffer, and as long as it keeps serving after people are done watching (to compensate for the up/down pipe asymmetry), then the swarm would survive just fine.

Indeed, I think making swarm participation much easier and more appealing might increase the depth of resources around any given torrent, making results net better for popular files.

<comment><USER26> No, I don't have a demonstration since nothing like this was ever widely adopted, but it is an opinion shared among the bittorrent community: "One of the key algorithms in bittorrent is the rarest-first piece picker. It is vital to bittorrent's performance that the piece picker fulfills both of these requirements:

        The rarest piece is picked (from the client's point of view of the swarm)
        If two or more pieces have the same rarity, pick one of them at random

The reason to pick a random rarest piece is to always strive towards evening out the piece distribution in the swarm. Having an even piece distribution improves peers' ability to trade pieces and improves the swarm's tolerance to peers leaving." [http://blog.libtorrent.org/2011/11/writing-a-fast-piece- pick...](http://blog.libtorrent.org/2011/11/writing-a-fast-piece-picker/)

<comment><USER27> I think that analysis only holds for people who want the whole package and aren't in a hurry.

If you're shifting to a demand-driven system, then pieces aren't needed equally. A numerically even piece distribution isn't what the swarm most needs. Indeed, I start watching things on Netflix that I never finish, so having more people with early pieces of something would better mirror actual demand for them.

I'm sure that plenty of people in the Bittorrent community are worried about change, but plenty of people in every community are worried about change. Until I see some math or some simulations demonstrating that this can't work, I won't be persuaded that there's an actual problem beyond the (reasonable and legitimate) fear of change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If anyone (or a contributor) from popcorn is reading this:

Can you explain the SEEDING part of it in more details? As your description says it will be seeded for _some time_ to avoid leeching but can you describe this in a little more detail.

I know the project is trying to reduce/remove complexity from the torrent kingdom (its from whatever i see in this beta version i would say they have done a pretty good job!) but I have a (maybe an obvious) suggestion that you guys might want to add a "settings" pane somewhere so that users can play with settings.

The only major criticism i have is that the project is overly depended on YIFY as the provider of content. Which is also a problem because everything is either in 720 or 1080.

I hope some of the more "legal" providers learn from the simplicity of this project.

</comment><comment><USER29> This app is fantastic. It really is a huge win for usability. I downloaded the app and was watching "12 Years a Slave" in less than 30 seconds.

I hope they add TV shows with a nice interface for browsing seasons.

<comment><USER30> If there were ever a title worthy of being enjoyed without compensating its creators for their labors, it's "12 Years a Slave", right?

The cognitive dissonance, it burns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think if this idea of equivalence between paid and pirated content is taken to it's logical extreme, the result will be less movies being produced.

Maybe it's preferable to keep it as is today: piracy as an option for some and as a force against too much control from the content industry.

<comment><USER32> Why shouldn't the cost of entertainment naturally drop as more high-quality content is produced? And if that's the case, aren't big-budget productions already living on borrowed time?

To explain, entertainment is fungible, and today we have an embarrassment of entertaining riches: books, hangouts, news, board games, video games, music, TV, social web, sporting events, etc. Almost all of these things can be distributed world-wide at minimal per-unit cost.

Since entertainment is fungible, the competition for for 12 Years a Slave isn't just Dallas Buyers Club, it's also 2048, reddit, Attack on Titan, the Olympics, and whatever piques my interest during a Steam Sale. That sounds like the increase in supply for entertainment is far outstripping the increase in demand.

<comment><USER6> That's an interesting take on it. Even in a single entertainment category it can often feel like the supply far outstrips demand, especially if my morbidly obese Steam library is considered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you're interested in node, I highly recommend poking around the source files. Pretty amazing what's possible in a small amount of code.

While the frontend is all Backbone, the real magic happens in its backend dependencies like peerflix ([https://github.com/mafintosh/peerflix](https://github.com/mafintosh/peerflix)) and video.js ([https://github.com/videojs/video.js/](https://github.com/videojs/video.js/)).

Edit: And, of course, the remarkable (undocumented?) API provided by subapi.com. Check out [http://subapi.com/popular.json](http://subapi.com/popular.json) !

Double Edit: The API appears to be developed by the Popcorn Time people, as per [https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn- app/issues/294](https://github.com/popcorn-time/popcorn-app/issues/294)

<comment><USER34> Popcorn Time 0.1.0 depends on subapi.com to continue functioning. Based on the source the API returns JSON file with the following structure: { movies: { [ torrents: [ {'quality': '1080p', url: '[http://url.torrent'](http://url.torrent')}, {'quality': '720p', url: '[http://url.torrent'](http://url.torrent')}, {'quality': 'undefined', url: '[http://url.torrent'](http://url.torrent')} ], subtitles: [ {'language': 'en', url: '[http://url.srt'](http://url.srt')}, {'language': 'undefined', url: '[http://url.srt'](http://url.srt')} ], imdb_id:, title:, year:, runtime:, synopsis:, voteAverage:, poster:, backdrop:, seeders:, leechers: ] } }

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This was made here in Argentina, we don't think that much of legal issues here.

<comment><USER36> Exactly, good luck to the RIAA goons trying to mess with South Americans.

<comment><USER37> They can just pay off the politicians to throw the developers in jail.

<comment><USER38> <joke>Or bring some democracy.</joke>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Discussion about Time's article on this piece of software: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7377089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7377089)

</comment><comment><USER40> Public domain movies. Ya.. Be careful and all that when they're not, you're not just consuming copyrighted works you are distributing them.

</comment><comment><USER41> In my opinion, the real issue is more along the lines of "How do I purchase and watch a film that I would like to see." The solutions are many and varied, but none provides access to all of the films one might want to watch. A given film may never be available in a theater near you and once they leave, may never become available online (via Netflix, iTunes, etc.) Just like the record companies, the production houses are hoping that if they fight progress long and hard enough, people will continue to pay top dollar for physical media.

In the case of the record companies, widespread pirating put pressure on these companies to make their content available online at reasonable prices. In my opinion, piracy is once again providing that pressure, this time on the film production houses. I believe that once the majority of films are available online at reasonable prices, products like Popcorn time will lose much of their appeal.

</comment><comment><USER42> Can someone confirm that the .exe I download is the compiled version of the github repo?

</comment><comment><USER43> Seems somewhat unethical to release something that is essentially designed for piracy.

<comment><USER44> Is it less ethical than corporations lead by "the man" that refuses to use new technology for fear of not being able to wring every drop of profit out of people?

Look at staggered releases of Movie/DVD/rentals/redbox and the fake scarcity to protect profits.

I know companies need profit... but on the same time, if it really is THAT easy to get movies to people - then it's time for a shakeup that moves the industry forward.

MP3s and napster led to iTunes and other avenues to get music easily AND "Support the Artist".

Maybe we'll get better options out this - other than Netflix (Which I love, but damn it doesn't have a lot of titles) or pick-your-flavor digital locker that may or may not exist next year?

<comment><USER43> Movies and music are a luxury item, not an essential. So it is very difficult to construct an ethical argument that supports piracy of newly released works, as there is basically negligible harm to the consumer in not receiving such items for free.

(Compare this to, for example, patents on medical products being used to induce scarcity. The stakes here are life and death - so there is a strong ethical case in favour of ignoring the patents to produce cheaper generic products so they can be supplied to those who would otherwise be unable to pay. As has been done with certain drugs in the developing world.)

<comment><USER44> I never said that we should receive them for free. Re-read my post. Slowly.

Look at MP3s, Napster and iTunes. The Music industry refused to offer digital alternatives leading to Napster. It was(/is) easier to get music for free. Why would I buy a CD with a rootkit on it (look up Sony Fiasco #87), or pay $15 for a CD when I only want one song? Why go to the store when I can get it sitting at home?

It was easier to get for free, and the industry suffered for not giving customers what they wanted.

Now we have iTunes/Amazon/etc and I can buy a CD OR just a single song! Or I can subscribe to Pandora/LastFM/etc to get music other ways.

I get to support the artists I like with ease! EVEN THOUGH I can get it "for free". It's not a BURDER to support my music entertainment "needs" and I have multiple options.

Now... compare that to Movies where they make fake scarcity by forcing a release cycle that basically forces people to pay multiple times. Movie. Followed by DVD. Followed by DVD Ultimate Edition. Followed by Red Box. etc... (not to mention DRM and other restrictions). Followed by broken availability (This only available on Netflix... that only on Amazon... Hulu... Disney... blah blah bleh)

There is no reason they can't do Movie followed by general release. Rentals on the same day as DVD release. Available in multiple places easily.

Or do you honestly believe there is a good reason for a months long delay forced on Red Box (or similar) before they can start renting a DVD? AFTER Months long delays to get to DVD?

<comment><USER45> > There is no reason they can't do Movie followed by general release. Rentals > on the same day as DVD release. Available in multiple places easily.

Sure there is, and the reason is that the various streaming and rental services throw lots of money at them (and the physical rental services were doing this before streaming was even an issue) to get exclusivity, and the movie producers are profit-maximizing industries.

<comment><USER44> And the same thing happens: It's more difficult to get "legally" (DRM, channels, "months" until available in my area/format, etc)? Easier options will keep popping up.

I'm sure plenty of money got thrown around then, as well as now... but if the _CUSTOMERS_ aren't given good options? Then they'll go for 'other' options...

Same thing happened with Music until reasonable options appeared.

Same situation for intrusive DRM on Games like always-on-connections (Hello Sims), CD/DVD checks, nanny software, etc...

When it's easier for pirates - AND they have a better customer experience? Something is wrong and the market will fight back.

History ignored is a history doomed to repeat itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> We need an onion protocol for the torrents:

you -> [encrypted data] proxy peer -> destination peer

In this case, unless all the proxy and the destination peers are controlled by policing actors they can't know who's downloading what.

<comment><USER46> Except this will result in massive bandwith charges for all nodes included.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This looks very interesting. It works quite well, on Linux as well. This technology could actually be used for legal purposes too, lowering the price of content - if content providers really wanted to.

</comment><comment><USER48> "Hit & Run" torrenting without proper seeding hurts the torrent community and makes Hollywood happy. I do not support "Popcorn Time", but i /do/ support free culture.

</comment><comment><USER49> Can i beam this with chromecast?

<comment><USER50> As long as the video is in a supported format you should be able to: [http://bolivar.tumblr.com/post/79222932441/popcorn-time- chro...](http://bolivar.tumblr.com/post/79222932441/popcorn-time-chromecast)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I actually had the idea to a) create a similar product/service, b) charge for its use and c) transfer most of the income (keeping only enough to cover the running costs) to the producers of the original material, with or without their consent. I have no idea how would that work out, but I bet that after a few months/years of steady and growing income some things would start to change.

</comment><comment><USER52> Popcorn Time's dead-simple user interface is what makes it so easy (and addictive) to use! I just posted some thoughts: [http://www.designguru.org/blog/110314/popcorn-time-and- simpl...](http://www.designguru.org/blog/110314/popcorn-time-and-simplicity- pressing-play)

</comment><comment><USER53> Is this legal in Canada? Because this constitutes streaming and not uploading, so it should be legal?

<comment><USER54> This is not streaming, this is just torrenting and it includes uploading. The only difference between this and other torrent clients is that it downloads torrent files sequentially by default and opens the file as soon as you have enough data to start watching. From the FAQ:

Popcorn Time works using torrents, fair enough. Am I seeding while watching a movie?

Indeed, you are. You're going to be uploading bits and bits of the movie for as long as you're watching it on Popcorn Time.

[http://getpopcornti.me/faq](http://getpopcornti.me/faq)

<comment><USER55> This is what (sadly) puts a hole in the concept. Because most of the tyrant ISPs don't provide symmetric connections, you are never going to maintain a 1.0 ratio throughout a viewing, so you depend on seed boxes to keep the download demands from crippling popular videos. Unless they add a daemon option to keep seeding when not using the app, users are always leechers.

<comment><USER56> Not necessarily. It doesn't matter how much faster your download speed is as long as your upload speed is fast enough to "reverse stream". i.e. for a 700mb 1h40 movie your upload speed needs to be ~120kB/s, which most people have now (at least in the UK)

<comment><USER55> That is only if you always watch your movie start to finish. If you don't consume the whole film that number goes up dramatically, say if you watched 5 minutes at a 5MB/1MB connection, then you could download 1.5GB (probably half the movie) while only seeding 300MB back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> What exactly does this client do?

Does BitTorrent protocol support ordered downloading? What usually prevents streaming kind of usage is the fact that BitTorrent clients download file blocks without any specific order. If ordering is possible, then any client should be able to do that.

</comment><comment><USER58> On a similar topic, years ago I used to download video from Chrome, and as it was downloading I could watch it with VLC, so long as the download stayed ahead. Then that stopped working. Is there a way to recreate this functionality?

<comment><USER59> This happens because it no longer downloads to the final location, it usually downloads to the same place but with .crdownload or something appended. I get around this by downloading with a different program (aria, wget, etc...) or by hard linking the file it's actually downloading to something looking like a movie file, and vlc-ing that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> How does this work? Is it downloading chunks in order from people, or just starting off doing that, then downloading the rest non-sequentially and streaming that? Is it seeding what it takes? Does it cache complete movies?

<comment><USER61> All those are answered on the website's FAQ.

<comment><USER60> Thanks.

Edit: Wait a second, none of them are answered! Unless i'm looking at a different FAQ

<comment><USER61> Yeah, now that I look at it, looks like you're right. Most of the questions are answered elsewhere in this thread, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Sexy, could it be done as an HTML5 app? That way it would be easier to distribute.

</comment><comment><USER63> FYI there is another project like this being discussed on Hacker News in parallel: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379166](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7379166)

</comment><comment><USER64> This seems waaaaaayyy too polished in all respects for an app designed to break the law. I would not be at all surprised if those prebuilt binaries were sending your details off to the MPAA.

<comment><USER65> The MPAA already has the ability to view torrent seeds, why would they waste so much resources to create this?

<comment><USER66> Honeypot, but that doesn't hold up since torrenting movies is so wide spread already.

<comment><USER67> But just in time for TPP deliberations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> uTorrent has a similar function [1], but from what I've heard, it's spotty at best.

It's rare that you'll get enough of the packets at the right places to get a coherent stream going. Especially if you haven't told it to stream from the start of the torrent.

Gonna be interesting to see how this goes, same concept or some cool tech in the background like S3?

[1] [http://www.utorrent.com/help/faq/ut3#faq1](http://www.utorrent.com/help/faq/ut3#faq1)

<comment><USER55> I've always thought of how revolutionary it would be to have some kind of video hosting site where you distributed encrypted content throughout the users in fragments. When you would be using the client it would always be broadcasting to others, but you could enable or disable a background daemon to do it throughout the day. You could have it "smart allocate" the video cache, and it would keep local your favorites and could pull down your "watch later" videos in advance. It could buffer episode 2 when you are watching episode 1, etc.

I can't think of another way to democratize youtube - the costs of storing and broadcasting petabytes of videos are astronomical, but I think torrenting proves there is a _lot_ of untapped bandwidth in the world you could take advantage of if you mask it over with a nice GUI. I guess that is the real downside of such an idea - it can't work in the browser, unless you implement a torrent client in javascript, and even then you couldn't maintain a local cache.

<comment><USER69> Why couldn't you maintain a local cache with JavaScript? Chrome and Opera already support the Filesystem API and it's only a matter of time before it ceases to be a working draft. But even discounting that API (which allows you to set a user authorized storage limit your application has read/write access to) there are already ways to cache > 5 MB of data in the browser; they're just hacks at this point.

<comment><USER55> If the FS API were standardized and broadly adopted then yeah, it wouldn't be an issue. I've never gone around trying to store greater than localstorage on all the browsers though to know if it would work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> There should really be a version of this using files stored on sharehosters, like what you can find on serienjunkies.de . There is basically zero legal risk when using those.

</comment><comment><USER71> I would love to have a server version of that which I could host on some VPS. It shouldn't be that hard as it's just some node/backbone code.

</comment><comment><USER72> >YIFY torrents

Why bother.

<comment><USER73> Yeah, considering the terrible quality of YIFY's movie rips I wouldn't see this as being competitive with legal alternatives at all. All the audio is low bitrate stereo, and the 1080p video never goes above 2500 kbps. The second there is any motion the entire thing falls apart into a blocky mess.

Such low bitrates do make it easy to stream, but I don't think the site is correct in saying you are watching "the best quality".

<comment><USER74> XBMCtorrent has other providers (such as Kickass). [http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174736](http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=174736)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> So finally, I as a "Internet Gueto" citzen can finally watch all the content that I really want to pay for but can't???

This is AMAZING news!!!

</comment><comment><USER76> would not be surprised if people would start getting caught using this app.

I don't think the app really is useful when you weighs the risks.

</comment><comment><USER77> This is pretty much illegal in the U.S., right?

<comment><USER78> Yep, is it actually legal any where?

<comment><USER79> In Poland you can download anything for your own private use - so this would be completely legal.

<comment><USER80> This is a torrent client, and uploads while you watch.

<comment><USER79> You can disable uploading, for the sake of legality.

<comment><USER81> So then you'd be parasitizing the parasites. I like it (gives them a taste of their own medicine).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> The west finally caught up to china (PPS).

</comment><comment><USER83> i think this community is the last place for this. I have the sense most people can figure out a torrent download and get it running. Weren't people actually able to download files and open the in the early 2000? OR has that become a resume skill too ? "Can download and run files"

<comment><USER36> Disagree COMPLETELY. I can waste time hunting down the file I need, or someone can build something fantastic to use.

Hell, when I was a youngin' I wrote FastFlick to make MY life easier. We as hackers are always striving to make things simpler for everyone, but most importantly for ourselves.

[http://fastflick.blogspot.com/](http://fastflick.blogspot.com/)

<comment><USER84> Your use of capitalization is completely unnecessary. I think a better convention might be to use single stars like _completely_ or double stars like __completely __but the moment I see letters in all caps I just automatically disregard whatever it is that person is saying.

Edit: HN doesn't seem to know what to do with double stars.

<comment><USER36> Thanks for LETTING me KNOW?

<comment><USER85> "Thanks for _letting_ me _know_ " just looks creepy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> It would be cool to pay a small fee in order to watch one of these movies once. Like a digital movie ticket

</comment><comment><USER87> Is there a way to stream it over DLNA?

</comment><comment><USER88> Although I do support (legal) torrenting, I wonder whether one can trust this applications considering the high risk of malware packaged with this application coming out of this community.

Having said that, I do not know of the developers/people behind this project, so please do not take offense at this if this is misdirected and/or wrong.

<comment><USER89> Seems to be open-source: [https://github.com/popcorn- time](https://github.com/popcorn-time)

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Is there anywhere that explains how streaming from torrent works?

<comment><USER91> [http://www.utorrent.com/help/faq/ut3#faq2](http://www.utorrent.com/help/faq/ut3#faq2)

It works very similarly to streaming anything. When you think about streaming a video on Netflix, the server sends the movie data to your computer sequentially, so after it downloads maybe the first 4 minutes, your movie starts playing, and while your movie plays it continues to download the rest of the movie.

Streaming via torrent works similarly, except while the movie is playing, you're also seeding.

It's generally frowned upon to download sequentially via a torrent because normally, torrent "pieces" are downloaded randomly to ensure that all pieces are available to everyone evenly. Imagine if everyone were trying to download the same piece at the same time!

That's it in a nutshell!

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> 2014 version of Napster.

</comment><comment><USER93> A much better solution to this problem is put.io

<comment><USER94> can you get this to work together with popcorn time ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Yes! Excellent. In their face.

</comment><comment><USER96> fucking awesome

</comment><comment><USER97> Are you guys seriously crying and screaming about compensation when so many actors/directors/producers are filthy rich? I am sure they are all so hungry right now...Think about it! Not to mention the differences between countries regarding salaries and quality of life.

<comment><USER91> Would you support someone stealing a MacBook Pro or a Microsoft Surface?

I mean, both Apple and Microsoft are filthy rich, so what's a few thousand?</comment></comment>