When Lobbying was Illegal - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/when-lobbying-was-illegal/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps the least understood view of lobbying that really informs how perverse the system has become is that as a general rule people believe the lobbyists are calling the congresspeople to offer them money. In reality, it's the congresspeople, desperate for campaign cash, that are calling the lobbyists for money.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/27/145923803/the-f...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/27/145923803/the- friday-podcast-a-former-lobbyist-tells-all)

The cost of congressional elections has increased so much that it has become essentially required for someone aspiring to political office to raise enormous amounts of money. As a result they're asking lobbyists to contribute. As a result they're more likely to take positions that are friendly to those interests.

Effectively the polarity of the commonly stated narrative is backwards. It's not lobbyists giving money for special favors, it's congresspeople needing money who give special favors in the hopes of maybe getting money. This is even more perverse, and harder to fix than the former. Essentially, I wish my congressperson was more traditionally corrupt, that's an issue we know how to solve.

<comment><USER3> The solution is to actually increase the number of politicians so that each district is small enough that you don't need money to get elected (you need districts of about 25,000 voters). The crazy thing is it doesn't even cost anymore money because as you increase the politicians you take away their staff.

If you want to know more about this idea see [1].

1\. [http://www.thirty-thousand.org](http://www.thirty-thousand.org)

<comment><USER4> Ireland works this way; there are about 25k voters per representative. What happens is clientilism: representatives become very concerned with local issues and neglect national issues. Corruption of a different, more local kind, is encouraged.

<comment><USER5> That's how democracy is meant to work.

<comment><USER6> I disagree. I think that exactly the opposite of how democracy is supposed to work. In the US, anyway.

<comment><USER7> Obviously, since the US is not a democracy, but a representative republic.

<comment><USER8> _democracy_ \di-ˈmä-krə-sē\ a form of government in which people choose leaders by voting - Merriam Webster, first definition

 _democracy_ (dĭ-mŏkˈrə-sē) Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives - American Heritage dictionary, first definition

With apologies to Plato, the word "democracy" most commonly refers to nearly any political system that involves voting. The only time anyone uses the word democracy to mean "direct democracy," with every citizen voting on every issue, is when they're criticizing someone else for using the word democracy in exactly the way almost everyone does all the time.

See my companion rant: Hitler's National Socialism was a form of fascism in the way we use that word today, even though he and Mussolini had distinct political ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> aaron-lebo This is very selective reading of history.

Politics were probably more corrupt and lobbying was even more dominant (just in different forms) in the 1800s.

Obviously, the train has gone off the rails at this point, but we aren't at a fundamentally different place politically than we were in, say 1896, when many of the same issues were at play.

<comment><USER9> And the article misleads about the state of lobbying today, for example:

> lobbyists who take out lawmakers for expensive lunches

A lobbyist who buys an expensive lunch for a lawmaker (member of Congress) is committing a federal offense under the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. The rule is so strict that if a member of Congress is attending a public event with food at a lobbying org, the org cannot provide utensils, unless the member of Congress pays for their food.

Executive Order 13490 also prohibits all executive branch political appointees from receiving gifts of any kind from lobbyists, including lunch.

The 1999 Supreme Court decision was the right one, as it struck down an interpretation that was obviously too broad. The article names Scalia since he wrote the opinion, but the vote was 9-0! (Obviously this was back in the good old days when the Supreme Court still had 9 justices.)

<comment><USER10> "You as a lobbyist cannot buy me a dinner for $40," Mr. Ackerman said in an interview, as he nibbled finger food at a recent conference on government ethics in New York. "But if you give a contribution to my campaign, I can take you to dinner, and we can discuss politics or official business. You, the lobbyist, can give my campaign $1,000, and the campaign can pay for our dinner. That's perfectly legal, and it's perfectly dumb."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20lobby.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20lobby.html)

<comment><USER11> But they'll never learn. The folly of those who think they can engineer a perfect society is boundless. "If only there was a rule..."

<comment><USER12> I don't disagree - but this sentiment can easily mislead. While it's folly to think any set of rules will be perfect, it's also folly to conclude that just because a rule has absurd corner cases that it therefore has no value overall.

Ironically (given the complaint Mr Ackerman voiced) one way to encourage imperfections in rules is to allow lobbying, which biases the decision making process towards small, focused groups that have a lot to gain by affecting the rules over large, general benefits.

<comment><USER13> > Ironically (given the complaint Mr Ackerman voiced) one way to encourage > imperfections in rules is to allow lobbying, which biases the decision > making process towards small, focused groups that have a lot to gain by > affecting the rules over large, general benefits.

Yeah, it's difficult to perfectly take advantage of an imperfect system, and that's a good thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I haven't seen comments from a lobbyist yet. I was a lobbyist in Washington for many years, both for small companies and nonprofits. My job was to work with my clients elected official, to educate other members of Congress, raise the profile of the issue, and do all of the heavy lifting and work that the elected official can't or won't do.

There are 535 members of Congress. Unless it's the President, the chances of one elected official pushing through the needs of their constituents is extremely difficult.

Lobbyists fill the gap by educating congressional staff, piercing the bubble that congress lives in, and providing expertise on issues that the staff may not have. I have never given a campaign donation, I have never paid for anything for an elected official or their staff. It makes things difficult sometimes, because most members of Congress won't return your calls unless you've given at some point. But I believe that's the ethical way to work.

tl;dr: Lobbyists are paid educators and mouthpieces, for people, corporations, and organizations that can't afford to be in Washington all the time, to make sure that their issue is heard and considered by the widest audience possible.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Wouldn't it be nice if lobbying were illegal?

Honestly, no. It's essential that law makers can be informed by all interested parties. The problem is a lack of transparency. Complex to control but not impossible. Every single meeting between an elected officials and anyone lobbying them should be in some way recorded and made public. As if it were a public debate. The other issue is fund raising. Too broad and complex to really go into here but if a politician didn't or couldn't raise funds it would make lobbying more honest, imho.

<comment><USER16> "The problem is a lack of transparency" might have been true in some historical era when there was less money involved; We could target a singular corrupt politician taking bribes if we knew about the bribes. Sure.

But that's not the problem we have. Our problem is fund-raising. Politicians are not meeting once every few years with a lobbyist at 2AM beneath the Lincoln Memorial, they're spending 60% of their time on the phone begging moneyed interests for reelection campaign funds or party goals, the day after they get elected. They're spending 25% of their time negotiating with lobbyists about what laws the lobbyists get to write ("The legislative subsidy model" of RL Hall, wherein they replace Congressional staff increases), and another 10% trying to raise their professional profile through non-legislative activities in the press or with political powerbrokers. Maybe 5% of their time is spent in committee meetings or on the floor.

On top of that, it starts out as a part-time job, with meaningful meetings limited to a few days of the week in order to satisfy the need to fly home to meet with contributors. The Senate has become nearly impossible to get bills through for a similar reason - a filibuster is a time-wasting annoyance legislatively, but its requirement that 51 Senators stay on the floor to break it prevents them from spending days fundraising, an existential threat to their careers, while the filibustering party only has to commit a couple Senators to keep it active.

Of the bills voted on in their legislative career, the proportion actually read by the legislator will be under 1%. The number read in full by their staff, under 10%.

Politicans are not hiding this; They are complaining about it. We have created a system wherein legislating ranks as the lowest priority, and not even the wealthiest in Congress can be free of implicit corruption.

<comment><USER17> What I find hilarious (and a little soul-sucking for the politicians), is that the money that they raise from taxpayers is used...to convince taxpayers to elect them, so they can raise money from taxpayers...ad nauseam

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This article kinda just glosses over any causes of lobbying, and then complains about the symptoms.

There is one incredibly interesting video I have seen which lays out a major root cause of corruption in the US, and the rise of lobbying and corruption since the 1970s.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gEz__sMVaY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gEz__sMVaY) (Cardboard Box Reform)

It is long, but well-reasoned and supported by a lot of evidence. Definitely worth a watch...

<comment><USER18> TL;DW (sorry, this is still long, the video is an hour!): Something happened in the 1970s which caused a major shift in a number of indicators in the US, leading to a general decline and increase in corruption in Congress. Lots of media kinds of sees this trend happening, but none of them have found a cause.

The author was in Africa, thinking about how E-voting could help to reduce the costs of voting. Which sounds great, but then, why is the formal voting process today, with voting booths, neutral polling places, private voting, etc. so sacred to democracy?

Two major problems come up when votes are not secret: intimidation, and vote buying. Leading to harassment and electoral fraud. We have already fixed this problem now here in the public, using the secret ballot. We are taught it in school and use it wherever we need a fair democratic process.

Except in one place - Congress. All votes are recorded and public, just see govtrack.us to see how your Congressman voted. But hasn't it always been this way? Even from the first Congress, with Yea or Nay votes recorded? No, it hasn't...

There is a little-known bill called the 'Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970', which introduced the electronic vote buttons into Congress, and records the vote for each bill by each Congressman. Before these buttons, they would mostly not record each vote individually. This bill overwhelmingly passed at the time, with no discussion about the problems this total transparency in Congress would introduce.

There has been no discussion since either! No pieces anywhere discussing this bill as a root cause since the bill passed in 1970. Kennedy was the only one that mentioned anything about the danger of transparency - as it would turn Congressmen into 'seismographs of public opinion.' But what actually happened was worse.

Since it takes a lot of money to run for elections, it is easy to turn to lobbyists to raise money. With transparency, lobbyists can directly see if the bills they want propped up are being voted for. Endless congressman admissions of the problems: "There aren't any poor PACs, Food Stamp PACs, or Medicare PACs." A more complex tax code has ushered in a huge increase in complexity in the financial system since the 1970s, and led to even more lobbyists from Wall Street. "But once lobbyists knew your every vote, they could use it against you." Almost all giant lobbying organizations (ALEC, Heritage Foundation) were founded only a year or two after this bill. Congressmen cannot vote their conscience anymore, they are pressured to vote for whatever the lobbying firm or corporation wants. Bills are basically introduced by special interests now.

The nice thing, is that there is an easy solution - reintroduce the secret ballot in Congress. AKA, a $5 Cardboard Box to have Congressmen vote in private. It's a tough pill to swallow as it goes against the nice idea of having transparency, especially at the highest levels of government. But we must reintroduce it if we ever want to have a Congress that is not controlled by lobbyists and corporations, one that is truly democratic.

\--

Really interesting video, definitely merits some discussion somewhere about the problems that total transparency in Congress can create.

<comment><USER19> Sorry if this is naive, but:

Don't we _want_ intimidation/vote buying of members of congress, in a sense? As a voter, it's important to be able to verify that the people I voted for actually represented my interests, rather than just paying lip service in the campaign. A citizen at the polls has no constituency.

Doesn't seem to me like there's an easy answer, although I'm open to the idea that closed votes are the lesser issue.

<comment><USER20> > As a voter, it's important to be able to verify that the people I voted for > actually represented my interests, rather than just paying lip service in > the campaign.

I think this vastly overestimates the degree to which voters actually look at how representatives voted rather than what they say on television. The only people actually looking at votes are lobbyists and party leaders.

The whole idea of representative democracy rather than direct democracy is that you elect people you trust to represent your interests. If you don't trust them then vote them out, because individual voters clearly don't have time to micromanage untrustworthy members of Congress.

The actual votes are all choreographed anyway. Everybody knows ahead of time whether or not a bill is going to pass and by exactly how many votes. Which means every bill that passes or fails with a margin of more than one vote (which is almost all of them) would have allowed anyone to change their vote from the one they preferred to the one their constituents or donors would have preferred without changing the outcome, and party leaders generally only care about the outcome. And if it would have changed the outcome then that means the vote was close and it shouldn't be hard to find someone on the other side that you can trade votes with so that you can both vote the way your respective constituencies want to see you vote even though you each effectively voted the other way.

The only thing revealing the votes does is allow the exact thing we wanted to prevent, i.e. it allows a representative to be rewarded or punished for voting a certain way but only by the people who know enough to distinguish when the vote is only for show and when it really changed the outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Although it seems like established cannon today that the Second Amendment > guarantees the right to own a gun

That's one of the more amusing typos I've seen lately :)

</comment><comment><USER22> It's good that people are cognizant of the problems here but lobbying and money in politics are much more symptoms of deeper issues. You can treat the symptoms all you like but without solving the underlying problems you'll likely get something just as bad happening in a way you can't control. Right now the system is so corrupt and broken in every way that the only people who would ever want to be a part of it are either corrupt themselves, power seekers, or incredibly dedicated (which leads to an odd mix for sure).

Things are changing, slightly for the better in some ways though it's overall a complete mess. It helps that it's no longer necessary to spend tens of millions of dollars just to communicate with the electorate, though we're still not quite there yet.

We can't just make a few tweaks to the legal code and magic our way out of these problems. It's going to take a generation or more of concerted effort and, as always, constant vigilance afterward, and a bunch of legal changes along the way as well.

</comment><comment><USER23> A lot of people seem to think that banning lobbying will make things better. But looking at campaign finance in India - where lobbying is illegal - the big problem is that all of this gets pushed underground. And what gets formed is this dirty nexus between criminals, politicians and businessmen. It gets worse because extortion is used as a measure by criminals to fund political campaigns (P.S. is this the reason for the tacit acceptance of the Yakuza in Japan..another place with no lobbies?).

Campaign finance needs to be more transparent... But the lobbying process in the US is already aspirational for me.

</comment><comment><USER13> In This American Life's episode on "Take the Money and Run for Office" [1], Barney Frank said,

> If the voters have a position, the votes will kick money's rear end any > time. I've never met a politician-- I've been in the legislative bodies for > 40 years now-- who, choosing between a significant opinion in his or her > district and a number of campaign contributors, doesn't go with the > district. [2]

A lobbyist is just a person seeking to influence decisions made by government. Another way to say this is a person who _educates_ Congress. Education is just a nicer sounding word for society's desire to influence its upcoming generation.

Congress is made up of lawyers. They don't know everything about the industries they need to regulate. Drug companies are trying to get away with using unknown substances which they proclaim are safe. Some are life saving, some aren't. Banks are constantly coming up with new financial products. Some help the economy, some don't. We need people to debate these new drugs and market dealings. The people who debate them should be experts. They should publish findings which can be replicated by independent parties. These experts and independent parties often come in the form of lobbyists. _One of the EFF 's jobs is to lobby._

Lobbyists aren't inherently evil, and while I think we should further restrict money in politics, you're never going to completely remove it.

Fortunately, as Barney pointed out, we have the ability to fire our elected officials. The problem lately is not just with lobbyists. It's also that we're not turning out to vote during primaries and general elections. If we want to get better representation we have to study up on the issues and candidates, debate the issues with each other, and vote.

[1] [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/461/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/461/take-the-money-and-run-for-office)

[2] [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/461/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/461/transcript)

</comment><comment><USER24> First get rid of the "dark" money. If a candidate has $1M then the electorate should know where this money came from to the last dollar. No laundering through PACs or other organizations. That "citizens united" is even an issue is completely unfathomable for an outside observer (as is this whole vocabulary that's been invented for describing a defunct political system: "gerrymandering", "filibuster", "fiscal cliff" etc. I mean come _on_...).

In most other western democracies a constitution is something no one thinks about. No one praises it or accuses any one for being "unconstitutional". Yet the US political system and the constitution it relies on (I presume) seems to be held in very high regard, despite being outdated and clumsy in many areas.

Admittedly - the US isn't a country it's a bunch of largely independent states and the federal government is more like the EU than it is like France. And the european politics is arguably working a lot worse than the US.

<comment><USER25> IMO part of the reason for the sacredness of the Constitution is that it is nearly impossible to change. 3/4 of states must approve a change, a very high bar. Maybe in the 1790s when there were comparatively few states and fears of tyranny were more reality based this was more reasonable, but with 50 states it's very unrealistic.

The other reason it's sacred is that we Americans revere our founders to an absurd degree. They were great men but not gods. They were deeply flawed, just like leaders of today.

<comment><USER24> Holding the founding fathers in high regard isn't a bad thing - but holding an outdated constitution in high regard may be damaging. It _should_ be hard to change a constitution. It's amazing how a lot of the US electorate finds the constitution so flawless, yet thinks "Washington" and the political establishment to be flawed - as if the political establishment is a product of itself and not of the legislation. I think winner-takes-all two party systems have the intrinsic problem that changes (such as to gerrymandering) will always benefit one side more than the other and thus it's hard to pass.

<comment><USER25> I think that as it gets harder to change a constitution, judicial workarounds will become more frequent. This then causes more anger around not following the written law in the general population. Since the founders are Gods who wrote the Constitution, defying this law is heresy. Political evolution is slow until the next big court case.

At the other end of the spectrum it's so easy to change that your rights can be removed in any old vote. Political evolution occurs at a faster pace.

I'd like different levels of review for certain pieces of the puzzle. Editing the first amendment? 3/4 of all states seems fair. Giving DC voting rights? Maybe a lower bar is appropriate, but not quite an up or down vote level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A winner-take-all electoral system concentrates power and enables winners to sell influence.

If I could hire whichever representative I want to exercise my vote in the legislature and fire him whenever I want, chances are I will have a representative that follows my wishes.

How would a collective decision making system work if you were designing it from scratch? Would it look anything like the American system?

No, I think it would be more like a parliamentary system using proportional representation.

But even that falls far short of what we could accomplish with modern technology.

Its also worth pointing out that the Founders did not set up elections for both houses of Congress. The Senate was appointed by the governors of the states. After that was changed, it became easier to buy influence. And easier to centralize everything farther away from the people.

But that can be turned around.

</comment><comment><USER27> Teachout: "If any of the great corporations of the country were to hire adventurers who make market of themselves in this way, to procure the passage of a general law with a view to the promotion of their private interests, the moral sense of every right-minded man would instinctively denounce the employer and employed as steeped in corruption."

Alex Mayyasi notes that the First Amendment guarantees the right to petition the Government. However, Teachout was discussing a case in 1866, many years before corporations were granted First-Amendment rights. Indeed, I believe that only public-interest corporations were legal in 1866.

It was a very different time. So it goes.

</comment><comment><USER28> Lobbying: Where rich people have free speech while in an office (or on a golf course) with their Congressman. And poor people have free speech in the comfort of their home.

</comment><comment><USER29> One problem with lobbying right now is not that it's legal, it's that its legal definition is so narrow that much of it doesn't actually fall under regulation.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is a case where footnotes would be tremendously useful.

I could not tell when the author was writing something from Zephyr Teachout and when the author was citing another source.

</comment><comment><USER31> My solution: publicly funded elections, and pay congress people a lot more so they can't be bought off with a new porch and hot tub, like that Ted Stevens. It would be money well spent. Make them millionaires, maybe some intelligent people would be enticed into public service.

</comment><comment><USER32> Lobbying is bribery whether it's the lobbyists giving the money or congressional candidates asking for it. The fact that this practice is so apparent in our system is a shame and contradictory to the system itself.

</comment><comment><USER33> I am thinking that in the future campaign contributions might eventually matter less than it does today. For example, it is a good thing all 40 states in the US does not do the presidential primary on the same day.

<comment><USER34> How so? I think the biggest problem with campaign contributions is that ads are so incredibly effective at getting congresspeople reelected. Maybe if everyone agreed to ignore these ads campaign contributions would be worthless. But there's a significant enough number of people who are swayed by it to matter.

<comment><USER33> I am talking about in the future when less people watch TV for example.

<comment><USER35> People are always gonna be getting video content from _somewhere_ , and they're not gonna be paying for it enough to make it ad-free, so they're gonna see ads regardless of the medium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > As one judge wrote, a lobbyist is "induced to use his influence for the > money he is to obtain; when, as a patriot and a citizen, he should only act > for the good of his country."

I wish that was still true.

</comment><comment><USER37> I never got why it cant be legal AND combined with a tax. 25 % of all Voices go to the Economics, but they have to "vote" for this- in secrecy, meaning, they pay taxes, and the amount of taxes determinate the share they hold on there part of the power.

Any lobbying outside of this, is illegal and leads to a company being auctioned off to the public. When a force distorts your laws and warps society, one has to sap this force via constructs and channel it where it can be useful. And this has to be done, without this force being able to destroy the machinery that channels it. It has been done with the military. It has been done with nobility. It can be done with what shall come.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why don't we just pay lawmakers $1M a year, or maybe more?

The fact that a lawmaker is impressed by a nice dinner or a basketball game is embarrassing.

<comment><USER39> They're not. Lobbyists are breaking federal law if they take a congressman out to a nice dinner.

Paying them more wouldn't solve this problem because running an election campaign is so expensive that they spend the majority of their time trying to raise money. They end up taking positions that are friendly to potential donors in the hope that the donors will keep sending them money.

The major problem isn't that they trade favors to lobbyists to enrich themselves directly (although some undoubtedly are), the problem is that they trade favors to lobbyists in order to keep getting re-elected.

<comment><USER40> So should we pay them less maybe, so that only those that care about politics run? Or does that leave them more open to bribery? A complex problem to solve!

<comment><USER35> The problem seems to be that a slightly indirect variation of bribery (aka lobbying) has been legalized in the first place, not that such bribery is hard to detect.

If there was any political will to solve this problem, it would have been solved long ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wonder if we could agree that technology really allowed money to be transformed into speech, which is something the founding fathers could not have really envisioned. So maybe restricting political message in the media would be a solution? Although I don't really know as I am not an american.

Anyway, as long as unfettered free speech is put on a pedestal, it's never guaranteed to always benefit the public.</comment>


Do any startups have dress codes? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@johndavidback/kill-dress-codes-3dbeec685dbd#.83927bpkv <comment><USER2> I do not like how the author jokes that women in workout shorts make him sweaty, nor the call out to "Be the bro tank you want to see in the world.".

If you want to get rid of dress codes then you must also accept whatever anyone else wears. Otherwise, dress codes will continue to exist so that, for example, women at the office who want to workout shorts to work don't have to deal with sweaty co-workers who objectify them on the internet.

Urban Dictionary kindly informs me that "bro tank" is a tank top intended to show of muscles on a male. One of the more negative descriptions includes:

> A normal non-douche will refer to these garments as "douche tanks", but the > tank wearing "bro" will deny the quality of doucheness that comes with the > product. If the user admits that the tank is in fact, a douche tank, he is > most likely not a douche. A "bro tank" has no class, and anyone with any > qualities of a gentleman, will not wear a "bro tank".

Bearing in mind the mish-mash that is Urban Dictionary, that term sounds like part of an identity culture that I don't want to associate with.</comment>


Show HN: Applying for jobs? Manage all your interviews in one place - <AUTHOR> https://afterinterview.com/ <comment><USER3> How do you plan on making money? My concern would be that you need to be extremely upfront about what data you're collecting and if you're selling it back to these companies whom the person interviewed with (even if anonymized). This is a _very_ personal exchange between an employee and employer that could have significant impact on employment negotiations. For example, I might not want employer A, knowing that I'm also interviewing with employer B/C/D, unless I choose to use it for negotiation. This could be used to target folks into lower paying jobs if they don't have prospects, multiple offers, etc.

I'm not trying to be harsh here or blow up your idea. Maybe it's a totally free app. I'm not sure. But, if you are selling user data, you could be inadvertently increasing companies bargaining power through hidden knowledge of what someone is doing too. If a company uses this added data on me, and gets me to take an offer that's 30k less per year, and I stay there 4 years, that ends up costing me 120k over 4 years (30k*4y) all for using an interview note taking app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the comment! To be honest with you, I didn't expect to get this much traction but that's something I have been thinking about a lot lately for the future of the product. I'm still not sure the exact path of monetizing the product yet but I know I want After Interview to help people to get the job they want rather than selling data to companies.

Currently, companies can claim their company pages but exchange for uploading a company logo, description and maybe job listing.

<comment><USER4> On your FAQ page you say "This will require a monthly subscription fee for companies".

What does the company get in exchange for the monthly subscription fee?

<comment><USER5> You could use the fact that a candidate has been verified to have interviews at a FAANG to let other tech companies poach them. Maybe a footer saying "Have you considered ACME Corp? (sponsored)" with a bidding system based on where they're interviewing or have interviewed.

Would HN consider that an invasion of privacy?

<comment><USER6> Not a violation of privacy if you get the users' consent first. And I'm sure that there are people who would actually want this as a service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I swear that I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but can someone help me understand what's so spectacular about this? I don't understand why it got so many upvotes. How is this more than a list view of companies you've applied to? The company can send a decision through the app, but how is that better than them just sending an email? If this app resulted in feedback being given at a higher frequency, I could see the value add, but most companies don't give feedback for liability reasons. Legitimately curious why anyone cares about this. What am I missing?

<comment><USER8> I completely agree with you. I couldn't believe the description, that I had to go to the FAQ to confirm what actually happens is what was described - a link companies can use to review. How is this better than email?

I mean I wish success and everything but I just can't see anyone bothering using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Interview feedback - Give interview feedback to your interviewer and get > feedback back.

I'd be very surprised (and impressed) if any interviewer gives honest feedback on the interview, in writing (via the app), esp. in cases where candidate was rejected / didn't receive an offer.

Cos that would have a discrimination lawsuit written all over it. HR and/or Recruiters also never gives candid feedback for the same reason. Because if they do, someone will eventually sue the company for discrimination.

Ex: The most common cookie cutter response for rejection based on ageism is "We really loved you, but unfortunate there wasn't a cultural fit."

<comment><USER10> I got clear feedback from Google, Box, and Clearbit about what they didn't like about the on-sites in my last job search 2 months ago.

At google I did bad in one of the technical questions (they told me which), box said I didn't seem excited about the company (true), and Clearbit said I wasn't able to implement a simple solution to a complex problem (because I was forced to use ruby and was rusty).

<comment><USER11> That's very suprising to me; I have given interviews at Google and Apple and they really drilled into my head that giving any feedback about performance was left to the recruiter, and any response no matter how germane it sounded could open up the company to lawsuits. That kind of answer was exactly what we were told we could not give.

<comment><USER12> I think when companies give feedback it is a recruiter or HR person doing it, and they are more aware of what could be lawsuit bait. I think companies want to avoid having engineers give the feedback, but are ok having HR do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just made a spreadsheet I added to over time to track this type of stuff for myself. It is interesting to see the process in a graph [0]. Would be really interesting to see this data aggregated for industries or specific positions.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/NnzXT6K.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/NnzXT6K.jpg)

<comment><USER14> Wow that's a lot of applications. I am actually shocked. How come? Are you not getting the jobs or are you striving for the perfect position? Were all those applications hand crafter for each position?

<comment><USER15> His numbers track closely to mine when I had only an unrelated career behind me.

300~ applications. ~25 actual rejections. ~15 phone interviews. ~5 onsites. ~1 accepted.

It felt both necessary and successful, considering the junior dev market is flooded and treacherous.

<comment><USER16> When I last applied for jobs, I had ~20 years experience. I was 8 for 10 after the phone screen, and 4 offers out of 8 onsites. I didn't apply to a single company, I just responded to recruiters reaching out for me, and I arranged all my phone screens and onsites within a 6 week window. I'm planning on changing jobs next June, so I already have about 5 recruiters ready to contact me around April of 2019.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone else had a hell of a time finding a job in SF lately? It seems like there is so much competition now I literally can't even get an in-person interview. It's a total shift from 5 years ago when people were begging you to come in after a quick phone screen. Now it's nothing but automated responses with Triplebyte quizzes and getting ghosted.

<comment><USER18> I haven't felt this at all. What companies are you applying to? How much experience do you have?

<comment><USER17> >I haven't felt this at all. What companies are you applying to? How much experience do you have?

Mostly mid-size startups. I have 5 years experience as a front end dev, but being self taught with no degree I look pretty bad on paper.

It's never been a problem for me in the past, but it seems like the market for mid-level self taught developers is drying up.

<comment><USER19> I have the same qualifications as you. And the same struggle getting my foot in the door. I used Triplebyte and it was fantastic. If you can pass their interview it's worth doing.

<comment><USER20> Why?

What actual benefits did you receive?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm a developer and also have a recruitment consultancy for engineers. Don't listen to what everyone says about monetisation, there are literally _dozens_ of ways you can make money from this.

Super awesome you're getting so many upvotes! It seems like a very useful product. I'll aim to send some more detailed feedback from an industry perspective separately.

Again - really nice work!

</comment><comment><USER22> I have been doing this recently with AirTable using a template I got via twitter thread: [https://twitter.com/kwuchu/status/1032007263026864128](https://twitter.com/kwuchu/status/1032007263026864128)

I've found it helps me keep much better track and stay on top of where everything is with recruiters.

</comment><comment><USER23> Great idea! I guess you are open to input if you post here:

1) afterInterview is a bit of an ugly name. Maybe shorten it to afterview?

2) How do you intend to monetize? I can only think of what u/WestCoastJustin said: data. But then you'd need to be more open about that in these days I think, people are more suspicions, especially the one who are first-movers.

2a) if not data, make users pay for your services. Maybe on a monthly basis - but you would need to implement that right away, bc later it'll be hard.

0) Good luck!

<comment><USER24> Monthly payments has the same conflicted incentive issue that paid dating sites have: success is ultimately the loss of a customer.

<comment><USER23> True! Never thought about that. Indeed conflicting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> All my job searches have been fairly intensive, switching between a notes file of some kind or a spreadsheet-alike and dozens of browser tabs (job req pages for companies I'm interested in, tabs of research on each company, etc).

Conversely, whenever I'm trying to get real work done on my phone I feel like I'm looking at and using the internet through a drinking straw. The interface just doesn't have enough bandwidth.

However, maybe there's a crop of people who don't feel this way and actually prefer phone apps? I'm definitely not going to tell these folks they're "doing it wrong", but they're ignoring at least some segment of the market if they only have a phone app.

<comment><USER26> I have similar thoughts. Years ago I had a big job search, and over a few weeks had more than 80 applications out - had a job posting page, some notes, etc. I kept track in a spreadsheet, but it was bothersome.

Later when I start freelancing (years later) I put together a tool, wrapped it in a dotcom - appliedto.com, then later a slightly more generic version - outreachto.com. Wanted to do email 'send as', and got bit hung up on making that work well (at the time, yahoo and web outlook were just PITA non-starters - I've done a bit more with outlook now and it's a bit better).

I've considered revisiting this service, but could never quite figure out any monetization. As others have mentioned, people who are looking for work are often cash strapped (or at least more mindful). Making it in to a bit more a a 'job crm' maybe...? Freemium, with sample cover letters and templates?

What I needed this for was for keeping track of which versions of resumes I'd sent to people, having multiple versions already written and uploaded, and email templates that I could save and reuse.

I don't really want to be hijacking this thread, but... at the same time, any feedback on these from the gallery would be appreciated. (and... no doubt there's some security stuff I need to revisit soon - it's an older codebase).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I believe the big challenge for any job seeker is to get the interview in the first place. I'd love to see an app that could provide me with insights about my resume, and how it stands against the type of job I'm looking for.

<comment><USER28> Jobscan ([https://www.jobscan.co/](https://www.jobscan.co/)) might be helpful. It scores your resume based on a pasted job description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is super-compelling.... if you can add a lightweight ATS on the other side.

It is very hard for recruiters to remember all the people that they have interviewed. But if you give them that functionality, you have the potential to kill all the ATS out there by going from the interviewee side of things.

Kind of like Github for interviews!

<comment><USER30> That would be nice!

Candidates asking permission to audio record their interviews and upload on the site as a portfolio. Recruiters listen to those interviews and can be much more assertive on their recommendations!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've been noodling on this product idea for about 6 months now, but never gotten around to building it. Drat, but congrats on doing it.

One killer feature I would propose is to help candidates weigh up multiple offers; salary, equity, commute time, enjoyment, advancement, etc.

<comment><USER32> Is that really a killer feature though? Seems more like a series of conversations with those important people in your life vs. Some sort of optimization algorithm.

And rather than have competition destroy your idea, take it as one data point towards validation.

<comment><USER33> And are people really getting that many offers that they have a hard time deciding? Usually there's some chemistry with the company....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Wondering what companies from FANG give feedback. I am specifically not allowed to give any for HR reasons. There are situations where it can be very frustrating but it's what it is.

<comment><USER33> Or, any company in general. We're not a FANG, and we don't give interviewees feedback after they interview, even when they write us (as a hiring manager). And our HR recruiters likely give an innocuously bane reason for not hiring the person.

<comment><USER34> yeah I only said FANG because the examples were all FANG... but come to think of it it's just common sense legally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Great idea. I am jealous. I thought of this exact same thing. The issue is: how to make money? It is difficult to charge the broke job seeker [ironically, it wont be the guy flush with offers using this app - it will be the guy struggling]. On the other hand, it is difficult to charge the recruiters unless you have the linkedin type volume. Even if you do, recruiters wont like the quality since these interviewees are struggling so hard they need an app to track failed interviews.

</comment><comment><USER36> The app looks nice but I hate doing any kind of data entry on an app.

You might consider making a web based version, then it could be accessed on desktop as well.

</comment><comment><USER37> Wait.How does one give feedback to the interviewer? Thought even as the interviewee, getting post interview feedback is not your prerogative. Am I missing something here. Also someone posted this a while back essentially for the same purpose of tracking various interviews and feedbacks[https://jobhound.io](https://jobhound.io)

</comment><comment><USER38> Honest feedback: I don't see how this succeeds without integration with existing applicant workflows. The cognitive overhead of another app to store data, manually update status etc is high.

If e.g. Monster or Indeed launched this as a value-add to existing functionality it would be big, but i'm not going to make the effort you're asking for in isolation.

<comment><USER39> I think this is geared more for the applicant than the employer. So ATS integration really shouldn't be a priority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Any plans on adding an ability to import job applications? I would love to switch to your product but unfortunately I already have a Google Sheets document with about 60+ applied companies and 50 rejected. If there were a way for me to at least import the company names that would make it easier to switch.

</comment><comment><USER41> Getting an interview is the biggest hurdle. I can usually count the number of interviews with my fingers, at least from the companies I'd want to work for - that is, it's usually under 5, most often 2-3, sometimes just 1.

Definitely don't need another login/app to manage them.

<comment><USER42> I see you are in a luxury position.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all for the comments and upvotes! I really appreciated it! Didn't really expect this to happen at all lol.

I will come back tonight to answer all your questions but my lunch break is over and I need to go back to work rn :)

</comment><comment><USER43> Interesting idea!

I'm also curious about the business model here. It seems like if you were to aggregate a certain set of metrics and then have each use rate each company for a given position, you could put together some sort of metric which might be useful a) to the companies that are doing the interviewing and/or b) to other folks that are applying for the same position.

Curious to see where you go with this...

</comment><comment><USER44> I find this to be a rather strange idea.

If I want feedback on my interview then I simply contact the interviewer and ask for feedback.

When interviewing with many places simultaneously the only differentiator that has determined job acceptance is the speed with which an offer letter was presented after the interview and the employer benefits.

</comment><comment><USER45> Some feedback: \- you should use a link in your confirmation email; nobody wants to copy/paste a confirmation code from an email. \- why do I have to give my first and last name just to list my interviews? \- location would be helpful. I'm in France; I don't really care about the response rate of US companies

</comment><comment><USER46> Seems like Microsoft Excel or Google sheets does the same job or am I missing something here?

<comment><USER47> So many apps just seem like Excel with a better UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Dude,

1) how do I delete my account? Pretty sure GDPR won't like not having a button for it.

2) you should probably test the UI a bit more with different settings. The top buttons, on my iphone 6s with bold text enabled, don't fit on one line.

</comment><comment><USER49> Hey, let's chat about this. I built a product that is related/similar!

</comment><comment><USER50> I need the same stuff but for managing agents and apartments I'm looking at.

Creating these kind of tools are really good ideas for disrupting the markets. Because once you get the users you get everything.

</comment><comment><USER51> This honestly seems so overkill. Just use a spreadsheet?

</comment><comment><USER52> "See what companies give interview feedback to their candidates for last 30 days"

This should be 'gave' or 'have given' instead of 'give'.

</comment><comment><USER53> Tbf, are there many people who use their phone for applying to jobs? Why not a desktop app? What as your thought process?

<comment><USER54> While you're probably correct right now, one way that he could begin monetizing it is becoming a recruiting platform that's largely phone based. I think more and more people are moving towards doing most things on mobile platforms, so why not job interviews?

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I tried to to use the app but cannot, since it does not accept my e-mail address which contains a + sign

</comment><comment><USER56> It can't accept email address that does not end with .com. My email address ends with .space.

</comment><comment><USER57> Great idea for an app, not sure how you can make money with this though.

</comment><comment><USER58> Side note: very nice graphics. Where did you have them designed?

</comment><comment><USER49> Yo. Let's chat about this. I've built something very related!

</comment><comment><USER58> Side note: very nice graphics. Where did you design them?

</comment><comment><USER59> Stay focused through the next economic recession.

</comment><comment><USER60> Would love to use this , but I'm sure this is one those many rushed applications with the startup mentality.

Personal and Senstitive data is probably stored in a totally unencrypted manner and developers have unrestricted access to production.

We've seen what happens in terms of security when you give something like Firebase to startups « developers »[0]

Love the concept , but I Care more about privacy.

[0] [https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/252443616/Unprote...](https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/252443616/Unprotected- Firebase-databases-leaked-over-100-million-records)

<comment><USER61> Do you have evidence or are you just being unnecessarily unkind?

<comment><USER62> I wouldn't be so blunt as the parent, but I think their comment demonstrates something that would be foolish to ignore if you're a potential business founder: credibility matters, and SaaS has a major credibility problem when it comes to personal data protection. If you're collecting personal data - <USER2> especially if you are targeting a market that is particular aware of how widespread data beaches are - it would behoove you to include your data protection approach in your sales pitch.

<comment><USER63> Honestly I'm not so sure. People apparently use Grammarly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> looks good but it's worrying it got approved by apple/app store (and some users) without a privacy policy

</comment><comment><USER65> Can you explain which part of your website requires JavaScript so much as to make it inaccessible to those browsing with JS disabled?

<comment><USER66> Seconded. I appreciate javascript unnecessary sites. Although, if something really requires js im okay with it. Theres some demos i have on my personal site that straight uo require js which i think is fine

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> hirepool.io is pretty good too

</comment><comment><USER68> why should I give them my data?

</comment><comment><USER68> SCAM

</comment><comment><USER69> Show HN: Selling shovels in a gold rush

</comment><comment><USER70> Initial dating ought to be managed similarly... meet lots of people and filter down from there.</comment>


Occupy Wall Street Demands - <AUTHOR> http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/10/06/2011-10-06_occupy_wall_street_protest_demands_outline_complete_and_complex_reforms_to_our_f.html

<comment><USER2> The problem is these demands are being retroactively refined by every special interest group along the spectrum.

What do the people on the ground really want? And who are they going to take it from, to get it?

Actual demands I've heard from the group range from the whimsical: 100% free tuition, ending all foreclosures, and ending the fed. To the more sensible: lowering rates on tuition loans, long-term mortgage restructuring (to keep people in their homes), and reapplying Glass-Steigal.

Without cohesive and unified demands, I don't see how this 'movement' will achieve anything more than noise. Surely even 'occupiers' have jobs to attend? (Did I just say, "let them eat cake"?)

<comment><AUTHOR> i agree. america's financial system has been relatively constant since the 1980s but only recently have received overwhelming criticism due to the financial crisis and economic recession. when times were good, nobody complains. these protestors are just unhappy with their current circumstances. i admire their courage to voice their opinions but they need a clearer vision and focus in order to enact any change.</comment></comment>


Why Honeywell can't claim "the world's most powerful quantum computer" - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/08/why-honeywell-cant-claim-the-worlds-most-powerful-quantum-computer/ <comment><USER2> Wait, Honeywell still exists?

It's not the same company, right?

If it's one of those "We're wearing the other company's corpse but like keep it on the down-low" situations, someone should revive the "Control Data Corporation" brand, and the rest of the BUNCH for that matter. People knew how to name a technology company back then!

<comment><USER3> Honeywell's enterprise value is $116 billion. After this month's market rout. Yes, it very much exists.

But you're partially correct in that it is, in many ways, what Allied Signal used to be, except it kept the Honeywell name

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

A more relevant point to make is that they have started trying to make a switch from a regular-way, 20th century "Industrial" company to a 21st century "Software-Industrial" player. This has been widely covered among the investor community as it's been at the forefront of the company's strategy for the past 12-18 months.

One quick link from Google: [https://www.barrons.com/articles/honeywell- software-stock-ne...](https://www.barrons.com/articles/honeywell-software- stock-new-strategy-51557932443)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Related thread from 4 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22498706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22498706)</comment>


All-Time Great Books for Java Programmers - <AUTHOR> https://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2018/06/10-all-time-great-books-for-java.html <comment><USER2> Blogspam of a bunch of Amazon affiliate links.</comment>


Breakthrough in Silicene Production - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/materials/breakthrough-in-silicene-production-promises-a-future-of-silicenebased-electronics <comment><USER2> Interesting, though it doesn't seem to discuss much of the actual benefits of Silicene. Not sure how easy it's compared to other material production but this technique requires * ultrahigh vacuum conditions * Injecting Oxygen molecules at 200C to cut the Silicene from the substrate using a scanning tunnelling microscope * A gold substrate (the picture is wrong)

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure anybody knows the actual benefits of silicene.

People expect it to be a better conductor than silicon, but I don't know if anybody was able to actually measure that yet. It may also be possible to process it on the same kind of machines that fabricate silicon chips, but I really doubt anybody ever tried any of that (personally, I doubt this).

It's a very new and unknown material.</comment></comment>


Snake: Full Python Scripting in Vim - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/amoffat/snake <comment><USER2> Nice work! The pip/virtualenv loader is really great, and can make the plugin dev more purely focused on the plugin. I think this part can be a great standalone project.

But I don't know about the boilerplate functions, some of them feel useful (like output capturing, state preserving), while others are just shallow abstractions over the vim API, which is almost never good. Abstraction over API is only useful when it provides different and better semantics, like jQuery over DOM.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks great! I know vimscript is painful, and even though I'm not sure how easy the existing Python solutions are, this seems like a breeze.

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't this also one of the goals of NeoVim? That you can script from any language.

<comment><USER5> Sure, and you can in Vim for the most part too. Snake has some excellent ideas how to use idiomatic Python, however, which would likely rest upon a more low level exposure of NeoVim anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does this differ from the Python support Vim already has?

<comment><USER7> It looks to me like boilerplate that allows you to more easily interface between the python world and the vim world. So instead of putting a bunch of python in your _~ /.vimrc_, you would install this plugin, and then put your relevant python in your _~ /.vimrc.py_.

<comment><USER8> Adding to this answer, it looks like this will handle virtualenvs requested for dependencies as well (albeit not completely yet). This is a pretty big deal in order for almost anything non-trivial since libraries like requests quickly come into play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is so cool, thanks! I wonder what the limitations are?

<comment><USER10> Your imagination. :D

<comment><USER11> So, Emacs running in a lisp interpreter running in python inside vim?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm looking forward to playing around with this. Vim is my editor of choice, and it would be nice to configure/extend it in something other than vimscript. Gives me a good reason to familiarize myself with Python as well.

Not to mention I'm a huge Metal Gear fan. =]

</comment><comment><USER13> Isn't this actually " _Vim_ scripting in _Python_ "?

<comment><USER14> English is a very flexible and versatile language. The word "in" may be used in either of those senses, among many others.

Dictionary.com lists examples of both meanings:

1\. (used to indicate inclusion within space, a place, or limits): walking in the park.

5\. (used to indicate means): sketched in ink; spoken in French.

[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/in](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/in)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I never wrote Vimscript or Python plugins for vim. What's the difference between snake and vim's normal python plugins?

</comment><comment><USER16> Currently feeling very deep nastalgia for Metal Gear

<comment><USER17> True that! When I first saw the starting credits of MGS i was like ...whoooaaaa !

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there some way I can pop into pdb when doing this? That would solve the biggest problem I have when writing vim scripts.

</comment><comment><USER19> This might finally get me to switch from Sublime Text 3 to VIM. Been looking for an excuse to make the jump anyway.

</comment><comment><USER20> There are no pathogen instructions. Can I just clone it into bundle directory? Will this work?

[Edit]: Grammar

</comment><comment><USER21> BTW what are your tips for programming python with vim?</comment>


The Lego Storage Guide - <AUTHOR> http://brickarchitect.com/guide/ <comment><USER2> Adam Savage has a great solution for storing hardware like bolts/nuts/bearings/etc., and I think it would work well for lego as well.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OPSbF6kM9k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OPSbF6kM9k)

<comment><USER3> Oh man, that's nice. Thanks for sharing that :-) I've got most of my legos in a far fallen distant cousin of those, namely Home Depot's HDX 15-compartment organizer: [https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-15-Compartment- Interlocking-...](https://www.homedepot.com/p/HDX-15-Compartment-Interlocking- Small-Parts-Organizer-in-Black-2-Pack-320034/204515485)

Which are nowhere near as nice, but they're $5 each instead of $50, and I don't have Adam Savage Bux.

I've got a number of them, and I'm looking for a way to make (or buy for not much money) a shelf to hold them like those shelves of Adam's.

<comment><USER4> I have standardized on the Harbor Freight parts storage containers. They're often on sale for $6 or so. [https://www.harborfreight.com/19-bin-portable- parts-storage-...](https://www.harborfreight.com/19-bin-portable-parts- storage-case-93928.html)

I realized that the HF boxes fit quite nicely into surplus 19" racks, which are pretty readily available second hand and so that's the direction I went as it was very fast and easy.

I also bought a few for the kids' Lego, but I use most of them for electronic components, mechanical components, screws, nuts, etc. I've inadvertently knocked over closed bins a few times without spillage (similar to the demo in Adam's Sortimo video).

I suspect this is a another case of more than 80% as good for less than 20% of the cost.

<comment><USER5> > I realized that the HF boxes fit quite nicely into surplus 19" racks

Is this the right product? The link says they're 16.5" wide.

<comment><USER4> I think so (like 99+% sure).

I'm on my way home from re:Invent at the moment, but will put a tape measure on it when I get home. The 19" dimension on server racks is not the inside clearance, but includes the rack "ears" dimension, so 16.5" wide to fit inside the clearance between 19" rails sounds like it's probably the right thing. Shoot me an email (in my profile) if you need any pics or other confirmation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When our kids were little, all of their Lego pieces went into a plastic bathub that they could no longer take baths in. I can still hear the noise they made pawing[1] through all the pieces looking for just the right one for the present assembly. That made up for the occasional piece I stepped on in the dark.

I hope to hear the same noise when our grandkids get their Lego collections going. At present their strategy seems to be to spread the pieces out on the floor. Step carefully!

[1] 'pawing' is not really the right word as it implies an animal movement. It was really a careful noisy search.

<comment> King-Aaron We used to have a 65L plastic storage bucket, but lined it with an old bed sheet, and then the lego poured on top.

This means that when the kids want to play, you can lift the entire collection out of the bucket with the sheet, then lay the sheet on the floor.

When they're finished, you pick the sheet up by the corners, and place the thing back into the box. We rarely had orphan parts flying around the house because the sheet both gave the kids a defined "play" area, as well as a much more convenient way to handle a large amount of bricks.

<comment><USER7> My bricks were in a circular denim sheet, that pulled closed into a bag by tightening a string that was threaded through eyelets along the perimeter. I believe it was even Lego branded.

<comment><USER8> My wife's aunt just gave us one of those this summer! I had never seen one made of denim before, I didn't realize it was a marketed product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm puzzled as to why one would ever force smooth scrolling with JavaScript. Browsers have that by default, and when people turn it off you can most certainly be sure it's on purpose.

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder ... how much effort would it be to create a five foot wide spherical ball attached to a motored stand that had three doors all actuated via small servo motors which had tiny cameras attached such that when an on-board Raspberry PI responded to a voice command of " _more yellow blocks please_ " the ball would rotate until the desired pieces tumbled out of one of the openings?

<comment><USER11> I will say from my experience building a 3 foot wide spherical ball with some lights on it that it will take _more effort than you would expect_.

<comment><USER12> I love HN: oddly-specific feedback to an oddly specific request :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Shameless plug: if then all your bricks are neatly tugged away, but you suddenly do not know how to start building, just grab a random, virtual hand of bricks out of some of your LEGO sets with the help of my pet project [https://brickshuffle.com](https://brickshuffle.com) .

</comment><comment><USER14> Huh, cool. I might give this a look.

I don't have many legos, but I do have a lot of surface-mount components and a decent number of through-hole ones.

Right now I like AideTek's 'Box-All's for the SMD parts, and thread organizers or card sleeves for the through-hole ones. But I don't have a great system and could always use new ideas!

And it seems like Lego bricks share a lot with circuit parts; there are a fair number of very common standardized packages/functions, but also a big long- tail of specialized bits and bobs.

</comment><comment><USER15> And when you want to sort two metric tons of Lego HN hero jacquesm has the perfect solution: [https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of- lego](https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm a big fan of using a good fishing tackle box for storing legos.

</comment><comment><USER17> Are there any good sets with variety of connectors. For example circular, angular, multijoints, cross joints and so on. Standard bricks are so extremely limiting.

<comment><USER18> Look into Lego Technic, it's lego but with a mostly different set of connectors and mechanics.

<comment><USER19> Just keep in mind that Technic design is substantially different from regular Lego design, and even the main "bricks" (liftarms) have slightly different dimensions than System ones. Connecting Technic with System is an art in itself - for example, the recent Porsche 911 [0] drew a lot of criticism for its design, whereas the upcoming Mack Anthem [1] is much more appealing.

[0]: [https://shop.lego.com/en- US/Porsche-911-GT3-RS-42056](https://shop.lego.com/en- US/Porsche-911-GT3-RS-42056)

[1]: [https://brickset.com/sets/42078-1/Mack- Anthem](https://brickset.com/sets/42078-1/Mack-Anthem)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I recently needed to pick up all my childhood legos from my parents' home and am now seeking a storage solution that... isn't plastic. Anybody know of anything?

<comment><USER21> Just use a suitcase. Keep it childhood, i.e. all in one big box and don't go for adult sorted mode.

Fundamentally, as a child Lego builder all bricks should be in use at all times as part of an existing construction.

Therefore if you are going to build a Saturn V rocket then you demolish the black and white houses in the townscape to make the rocket. Existing models are de-facto storage, if you also need a new car and there is no windscreen then maybe another car becomes an open top sports car. There is no receptacle labelled as 'windscreens' with the Lego part number.

In this mode all inventory is in memory, sure there is a lot of scrabbling around but that's Lego.

The other benefit of the suitcase is that it is lined and therefore good for scrabbling. Plus there are pockets for a few special pieces.

So collect an old suitcase as well as the Lego bricks whilst you are there. In practice the suitcase works well for moving play from room to room, plus, once closed, the suitcase can tuck under a bed or coffee table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Unfortunately unreadable because the scrolling is broken.

</comment><comment><USER23> Seems like lego would be a great material to build lego storage with.

<comment><USER18> Go full meta! Actually that's a good idea, I wonder if Lego could take that and come up with a system of their own.</comment></comment>


Systems Programming at Twitter (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://monkey.org/~marius/talks/twittersystems/#1 <comment><USER2> I don't understand how this is about systems programming. Would someone care to clarify?

<comment><USER3> I take it to imply the 'system' they are programming is the distributed/concurrent complex they are running. To other people, 'system' is below that, and this is application programming, or "middleware"

It seems like at any level, you write the system, and applications are above.

-dB

<comment><USER4> What else does the systems community do these days besides concurrent distributed systems?

<comment><USER5> Power management and flash/SSD-aware filesystems are also quite the rage.

<comment><USER4> Ya: distributed computing, storage, and power are hot. Where did all the kernel research go?

<comment><USER5> Much of it happens with different objectives, or at different levels, in the context of computing, storage and power management. See Akaros for example: [http://akaros.cs.berkeley.edu/akaros- web/overview.php](http://akaros.cs.berkeley.edu/akaros-web/overview.php) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Twitter seems like the poster child for Scala. I've played with Scala a little and it definitely has a lot of things going for it yet I wonder:

\- Is Scala used exclusively for systems programming in Twitter or are there other languages in the mix?

\- The majority of other big software players seem to be not using it for various reasons. Is that a concern?

\- How is the learning curve for new hires? How long before they become productive? How long before they write great code in Scala (as opposed to still figuring things out but maybe being productive)?

\- Isn't the JVM too big of a performance compromise for large scale software where every bit of performance matters?

\- Is it easier to hire people for Scala positions? Harder? The same?

\- How do engineers in Twitter with a lot of experience in other platforms and languages feel about Scala after having used it for a while? E.g. vs. C++, Go, Java, C# just to throw a few names into the hat there. Do people tend to just write C++ in Scala or Java in Scala or whatever or do they adopt to new paradigms with ease?

I know we always say that a good engineer can pick up any new language and to some extent that's true but I think expertise in a specific language builds up over time. Maybe an analogy would be a musical instrument. It seems some of the other languages have larger pools of talent, more mature tools, etc. I guess it's hard to be a new language in this world...

<comment><USER7> I've heard many complaints about Scala being too much of a "kitchen sink" language; too many paradigms and too many features from each paradigm. It still seems like the best language that uses the JVM, though.

<comment><USER8> There's also Kotlin, which is largely a better Java. And Java 8 is an enormous improvement too, since it supports lambdas, default methods, streams, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hi, I'm currently in the researching & prototyping phase of what's the best and will-be-the-most-community supported distributed real time distributed framework based on the reactor pattern?

So far, I've got:

Queuing Framework (rolling your own streams):

1) ZeroMQ (language agnostic, so have to roll your own serialization and services, seems like Google Protocol Buffer is the best way to go)

2) RabbitMQ (relies on a central message broker, with lots of built-in bindings)

Event-Based Frameworks:

2) Akka (JVM)

3) RxExtensions (.net) but have RxCpp and RxJava ports

4) Reactor (JVM)

Stream-Based Frameworks

4) Twitter Storm (Java-ish, but suppose to be language agnostic?)

5) S4 (Java-ish, but suppose to have bindings?)

Can any peeps help me out on your opinion what is the best or give me a better one? Currently, I'm having fun multiplexing sockets, dereferencing C pointers and seg-faulting, so any suggestion is welcome.

<comment><USER10> IF you're looking at RabbitMQ you should take a look at Kafka.

Overall, I think looking for one framework to-rule-them-all is a mistake. Different components demand different tradeoffs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The content here is interesting, but I don't like the way the information is displayed. Most of the time when I read HN I skim the articles I'm interested since it's not worth my time to dive into all the details. This layout makes it pretty difficult to do that efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER12> no a single word about the "data bus" they use. This would be better entitled something like "Scala crash course by a twitter system engineer"

<comment><USER13> They don't use a global data bus AFAICT. It's all driven by rpc through finagle (i.e. thrift). Finding service endpoints is likely done through zookeeper or some equivalent.

<comment><USER14> That is correct. The service discovery is called ServerSets and is available here: [https://github.com/twitter/commons/blob/master/src/java/com/...](https://github.com/twitter/commons/blob/master/src/java/com/twitter/common/zookeeper/ServerSetImpl.java)

<comment><USER12> I understand that there is finagle and also a service discovery backed by zookeeper.

I fail to understand how twitter's data stays consistent without something like linkedin's databus. Doesn't twitter manage a single point of thruth or a single version of thruth and propagate changes to secondary databases like social graph & search indexes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is anyone else having trouble viewing this on a mobile device?</comment>


Ask HN: What kinds of kernel designs are best for multicore processors? - <AUTHOR>

Among Barrelfish (http://www.barrelfish.org/), Corey (http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/corey/) and fos (http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/172...), which kernel design is more suitable for multicore processors? <comment><USER2> I think the first question to ask is, what is the definition of a multicore processor? Is it something like the current crop of cache-coherent designs? There are concerns about scaling this design to lots of cores. Or is it something like a network of machines on a chip? In that case, the OS might look more like Mach.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am behind crop of cache-coherent designs. Why scaling is an issue?

<comment><USER3> The cache coherency protocols do not scale as nicely as explicit message passing protocols, in terms of area/power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe this question would fit in better at StackOverflow.</comment>


The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume III - <AUTHOR> http://feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_toc.html <comment><USER2> One of the best presents I ever got was the Feynman Lectures on Physics.

To this day I still pull them off the shelf and look up things to refresh myself, or read through whole chapters again.

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465023827/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465023827/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Lots of discussion from 9 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6791153](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6791153)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, sorry, does HN not handle (www) for dupes?

<comment><USER3> It doesn't, but judging by the number of upvotes this submission has, lots of people missed it last time so perhaps it's useful to post again anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sorry for sounding greedy.But when do you plan to digitize Volume II?

<comment><USER5> I am working on the conversion of Volume II from LaTeX to HTML. There are 8 chapters left to go. When they are done, and after I have spent some time testing and debugging Volume II, I will post it. There is no schedule or deadline, and it's hard to predict exactly when I will be done because of other (often unpredictable) demands on my time.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why would anyone choose ember instead of angular? - <AUTHOR>

Angular is much easier to test, much easier to debug, and much more mature.  Why do people use ember? <comment><USER2> I've actually been using Ember for quite a while now and it's formed the basis of one of our products.

Once you get over the massive learning curve with Ember and keep within the 'emberisms' (i.e. the way Ember does stuff), it's an incredibly powerful framework. In terms of hiring people to code in Ember, it's much easier to onboard people once you have a few developers that really know ember through and through. The biggest problem i've found is that for a long time the API's changed around a bit (they are fixed now) and that meant that sometimes if you're on StackOverflow, the fix may not work anymore.

Having used Backbone, Angular and Ember; I would describe Backbone as the past, Angular as the present and Ember as the future.

Ember's got some pretty big people using it, Zendesk's new agent interface is built in it, Discourse, Square and (indirectly) Apple (iCloud uses Sproutcore which is where Ember originated from).

</comment><comment><USER3> Frameworks come and go, it just so happens that Angular and Ember both came out at a similar time, and Angular narrowly got a bit of a better foothold initially, that compounded into a solid head of steam and growth.

I've been back and forth on the two of them, and I don't know that Angular is that much easier to test and debug, or is 'much' more mature, but their are more blogposts, SO questions, etc. because Angular is more popular.

Don't forget, Angular has the backing of Google, so things are probably going to move a bit faster.

Some people like Ember, there is nothing wrong with it. However, I'd suggest new projects go with Angular just because over the next few years, more developers will have experience with Angular than Ember (or likely even Backbone).</comment>


Leaving irc.perl.org - <AUTHOR> https://sungo.wtf/2019/07/05/leaving-irc.perl.org.html <comment><USER2> Both Perl and IRC have suffered heavily from a massive loss of popularity over the past decade, I can't say I'm too surprised that irc.perl.org is going the way of the dodo.

I really like IRC and I'm really sorry to see it go, and I still have an irssi running full time on a handful of servers. Freenode is basically the only server that manages to maintain its user base, but even for them it's not really growing anymore. I used Mozilla's IRC server pretty heavily when I was learning Rust and it was great (the community is really helpful and well moderated), but AFAIK they plan to get rid of it in the near future. Can Freenode single-handedly keep IRC afloat? For how long?

Clearly these days it seems that people want something a little more advanced than the pure text chat of IRC, and the federated architecture is not seen as a killer feature anymore.

From my point of view the centralization of the web seems to be unstoppable at this point. You can argue all you want on HN but people will still ditch IRC in favor of Discord or WhatsApp. I was talking with a bunch of geeky people in their early 20's the other week and for some reason I mentioned IRC and about half of them didn't even know what it was. All of them used Discord and WhatsApp however.

<comment><USER3> I've been trying to get back to IRC, but the clients seem dated for the most part. Do you have recommendations for something with a UI that feels reasonably modern?

<comment><USER2> Not really, I'm generally fine with "dated". I use irssi with a config file that hasn't change in a decade.

Not that I think that you're wrong for wanting a more modern experience, it's clearly one of the main reasons IRC is losing traction. Some things can be solved client-side by, for instance, auto-fetching some URLs to display image links inline (although it could cause privacy concerns) but you also have limitations caused by the IRC protocol itself.

For instance IRC has no notion of "replies", if you want to quote somebody you generally copy/paste their comment and put your reply at the end. That's clearly primitive and makes it hard to find the original context.

<comment><USER4> > That's clearly primitive and makes it hard to find the original context.

Maybe. I am positive I miss 99% of replies (in "threads") in Slack. I always felt like the feature is designed for the case where you've already decided something, but people want to show up and bikeshed it, so they get a little area that nobody can see where they do that. Maybe that's not what it's meant for. But when I want to reply to someone, I say "@whoever, regarding foo that you were talking about earlier..." I think this is the IRC way of handling that and it seems correct to me. The reality is, sometimes you've missed your window to contribute to a conversation. No tool is going to change that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think we tend to forget that running infrastructure is more than just keeping the servers working. Initially i thought 'oh maybe i could help with keeping irc.perl.org alive', but my motivation quickly went away as I kept reading the article ...

Thanks for all the work, sungo!

</comment><comment> em-bee i'd like to thank you for years of selfless service to the community. (i am not a perl user, so this means the FOSS community as a whole)

we all benefit from work like yours, even if only indirectly. it is people like you that make the FOSS community what it is.

thank you, and all the best on your further endeavors.

</comment><comment><USER5> I miss the chat social culture of the 90s, and all of my IRC nostalgia is really just for that. ICQ, IRC, it was all different then. After the 90s we had the blog era and that was fine until Google and Facebook indexed and monetized searches and networks. Now there's Slack and Discord, which are still too persistent to be truly safe but have regained much of the undiscoverability that makes small communities possible. Perhaps someday we'll regain safety, and then it will be like 90s IRC but with good UX and more wisdom about the harm tech did to us in service of feature creep. Good luck and be well, sungo.

</comment><comment><USER6> if sungo is reading this: I'm happy to take over or help the new opers.

I've got some experience in IRC administration (Myself being in a similar position as sungo in a similar sized network).

The centralisation of IRC to places like OFTC and Freenode leads people to think that all IRC networks are similar to those, I'd rather help keep it more spread if possible.

That said, I'm sad to see another IRC operator burn out (since, it really sounds from his words that he's burned out with comments like "who cares, let it rot"), I wonder how we can support people better who are in "solo" positions like this in general.. :\

<comment> em-bee curious, why do you think separate irc networks is worthwhile?

if they are FOSS community then they should be all the same. of course, different channels, and different people, but all with the same shared ideals...

<comment><USER7> What if the people work on FOSS but do not share the same ideals?

<comment> em-bee working on FOSS is the shared ideal. granted, this argument is aiming for the lowest denominator, but i believe that the idea that code should be FOSS licensed, for whatever reason, is already a good common ground.

moreover, those differences won't split along irc network lines. you choose the irc network based on where the project hangs out. for debian that would be oftc, which ironically was created because a number of people didn't like how freenode was run at the time. but anyone who was involved with debian had to move, regardless of where they stood on that issue or on their FOSS ideals in general.

if you work on multiple projects, you may be forced to be on multiple servers. no choice in the matter and different ideals have no influence here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> TLDR:

> I put myself out there, worked with people I'm not really fond of, and all I > got for it was to be the target of everyone's rage and bullshit. No one was > willing to contribute towards change in a constructive positive fashion. > There was no reason to continue putting myself out there, to continue > putting effort into services that no one else was willing to improve.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why does Perl warrant its own network?

Why not join freenode instead?

<comment><USER10> There already is a well-populated #perl channel on Freenode. Unfortunately it's a socially unwell place that in a way has been taken hostage by a small tight-knit group of regulars - users like MST, Grinnz and pinkmist, to name a few - who go about managing and policing the channel in not only unfriendly ways but also in very unwelcoming ways in relation to new and casual visitors.

(ps. I'm a regular of the channel since the late 2000s, and can confidently state that its environment is today unhealthy and degraded)

<comment> em-bee i am not sure it's appropriate to name names here. it doesn't really help the discussion. (is there a way to alert moderators (dang)) to have the names edited out, or is downvoting the only option?

<comment><USER10> These are anonymous IRC aliases, not real names. What I've mentioned isn't a secret or in any way outing or revealing; keep in mind that #perl on Freenode is a _public_ channel, and anyone who's frequented the channel for more than a few weeks are familiar with what I described. If anything in this is sensitive it's the way newbies and "casuals" are treated there, and that it's allowed to go on without intervention from other Freenode staff.

<comment> em-bee they are identities, and it's not clear at all if they are anonymous or not. either way, the names don't really add to the story, so why take the risk?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> ironman perl also followed the same path:

[http://ironman.enlightenedperl.org/](http://ironman.enlightenedperl.org/)

It has been down for some months now.

</comment><comment><USER12> Good move, thanks. A very unhealthy place where you are bombarded with hostilities by very juvenile folks, who generally have no idea what they are talking about. I left it years ago.</comment>