Show HN: Filter – News from Twitter Communities - <AUTHOR> http://filter.news <comment><USER2> Based on retweets?

Why do I need to login to see it though ...

<comment><AUTHOR> It works by finding commonly shared article links, which can be tweets or retweets.

We're working on adding email registration as well as making our topics available to users who don't want to register. Right now, we're using twitter login because it's an easy way to facilitate account creation.

<comment><USER2> I am questioning the need for an account.</comment></comment></comment>


My Job Interview at Google (2008) - <AUTHOR> https://catonmat.net/my-job-interview-at-google <comment><USER2> I work at Google as an SRE, joined a few years ago. I am approaching 40, worked in a bunch of other companies before. My degree is is in the humanities, from a third world university you never heard of. I don't have any open source contributions. I speak lousy accented English (but I am a man and "white" if we are counting privileges.)

I got contacted by a recruiter. I had a couple of phone interviews which felt like sanity checking that I knew what I claimed to know. I was asked to grade myself in a bunch of areas. I chose makes around 5-6 for the stuff I think I know well, and zero or one for the rest. I was given some recommended reading list that I ignored. I did browse Skiena's book on algorithms to get in the zone. I didn't study it or implement anything. I am very stressed during interviews and would forget anything that isn't in long-term memory already so there was no point. (know yourself...)

I went to the onsite interview. Year, it's ~5 hours of being interviewed by people who have done dozens of interviews before. Everybody was unfailingly nice. I was panicing, not because "omg Google" but "omg humans I don't know for years already". Some algorithms, some Python, more troubleshooting and Unix. I had to estimate some numbers, so I announced I would use my cell phone calculator to not get anything wrong. I multiplied even low numbers by two on the calculator. Most interviewers are poker-faced about whether they liked the interview or not (now that I am an interviewer I understand - they probably try to put some distance between the interview and their rating, as they should). I could see that one was happy. I could see that one was not.

I was hired. Large team, three sites. I did a reasonable amount of C++ (not a language I ever claimed to know) fixing bugs and performance issues. Most of my work has to do with low-level synchronization in x86 - I picked a small "specialty" first and applied it to a number of problems. I like it. I feel that I actually write more code than my peers in the product teams, as they do too much design-docing, design-reviewing, meeting, etc. (they are SWEs, I am a SE). The design doc culture at Google is excessive and silly. I am exposed to that too.

I earn slightly more than my similarly-leveled peers on the SWE side /before/ accounting for oncall. Oncall rarely pages on weekends. I feel very able to fix any problem while oncall, or to escalate if not in my area. It doesn't stress me. I mostly consider it free money.

My peer SREs actually know far more about all the nice Google architectural stuff than our peers in SWE-land, who are mostly implementing features on top of huge abstraction layers and typically are only exposed to one particular facet of the infrastructure. Google's infrastructure is impressive and something of a marvel. It doesn't mean it's perfect. SRE is the better point of view to observe it.

Google employees _are_ better than in any other large company (a few boutique shops are better on average, of course, at a smaller scale). Some of them like to pretend that they are better than they are to the outside world. Internally, nobody goes far being arrogant, and showing vulnerability or gaps in knowledge is not a problem. There is also someone smarter and nicer than you anyway.

I interview people. The immense majority of people I interview are really good. It's not possible to get to the point of onsite interviews unless you are good, you just know the person you are talking to is a potential peer. Interviewers are happy when their candidates do well. The committee ends up rejecting most, though, out of hyper-conservatism. I have no idea how I was hired. I suspect there is a large amount of randomness between "invited for an onsite" and "hired".

<comment><USER3> Interesting comment. Thanks for the write up.

> The design doc culture at Google is excessive and silly

I have a friend who started there last year and said the same thing.

> My peer SREs actually know far more about all the nice Google architectural > stuff than our peers in SWE-land, who are mostly implementing features on > top of huge abstraction layers and typically are only exposed to one > particular facet of the infrastructure. Google's infrastructure is > impressive and something of a marvel. It doesn't mean it's perfect. SRE is > the better point of view to observe it.

Interesting point here as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recently had an interview at a taxi firm that followed this format.

One two three pre-interviews followed by a day of 5 grueling 1 hour interviews.

I didn't get the role. Apparently the frontend guy I had the first interview of the days five was concerned about my technical skills.

I mean, I find it insulting, having worked for the last 12+ years as a developer to be told that there were "concerns about your technical competency"

I hate interviews. I hate take home coding tests and have failed every single one I've had. Apparently this is a sign that I don't do well under pressure.

I've been building working software for years, and the main problem I have is convincing people that I can actually do the job. I don't have a degree, and I don't have prestigious companies on my CV, and I don't have the time or energy to chase around roles like this, so I have to settle for unfulfilling and underpaid roles

<comment><USER5> > having worked for the last 12+ years as a developer

I've done plenty of interviews, and the amount of years someone worked does not mean they are technically capable.

By chance, last week I interviewed a frontend JavaScript expert: couldn't explain 'scope', couldn't explain 'function context', didn't know what happens when setTimeout() is followed by an infinite loop ("After 10 seconds or so the browser will probably timeout the loop"). A junior cannot know everything, a senior should be able to pull a project and team.

Personal advice to you: if you are really good but cannot show it in an interview, try to land a job at companies with ex-colleagues, where they are able to vouch for your technical skills.

If a colleague that I respect vouches for someone (s)he worked with, (s)he is practically already hired.

<comment><USER6> > didn't know what happens when setTimeout() is followed by an infinite loop

I'm not some JS guru but I've done a few and I'm wondering why would I need to know this? To me this looks like the type of question that is there specifically because people answer it wrong, they know they answer it wrong and you know they know they answer it wrong so it makes them lower their demands in terms of pay rate.

<comment><USER7> I guess it's an important question because it is about the event loop.

Lots of weird things (bugs) can happen when you don't understand how the event loop work. I would definitely pass a "senior" javascript dev that don't know/understand the concept.

<comment><USER5> Exactly this.

A senior should know that JavaScript runs single threaded with an event loop, and therefore doing heavy calculations will block your user interactions.

If you don't know this, you also won't know when to use WebWorkers etc.

Juniors can learn, seniors should be the ones teaching them. Seniors should define the architecture of your solution, and solve weird problems. You cannot do this without proper in-depth knowledge.

<comment><USER6> Yeah but here's the thing: I do understand the event loop, I understand the sync/async models in JS but I have very little knowledge of how setTimeout works in this context. That's because I've never used it, and I've never used it because the book that I read 15 years ago about JS said something like this: "Here's a function that allows you to run some code after some time. If you feel the need to ever use it, it means you're doing something wrong, therefore please never use it". This very vague explanation combined the lack of usage of it makes it pretty hard for a candidate like me to realize that you are actually asking a question about event loops. So my question is, if you want to see my knowledge about those things, why not ask some direct questions about it?

<comment><USER5> I'm the kind of interviewer that would keep asking until you do know. I would actually start with asking about the event loop. Don't know that, no problem, what happens with setTimeout()? Don't know that, no problem, how does async, await work? Don't know that, why do we need WebWorkers? What happens with an infinite loop? How do events work? etc.

There are plenty of ways to see how this person came into contact with the event loop concept, whether in theory or in practice.

<comment><USER8> Meh, I'm with previous commenter. I know what the event loop means, that JS is single threaded, and what setTimeout is supposed to do under normal circumstances. I consider the question stupid, moreover your answer to it is likely incorrect, because it depends on the implementation. I bet Node.js never interrupts the loop for example (and I never even done Node.js, it would just be a sane thing to do).

And yeah, you might agree on Node behaving differently, but that just proves the question is very bad. Even with "in browser" clause the answer can change tomorrow for all we know.

It is like asking about undefined C++ behavior in an intentionally very bad example.

<comment><USER5> Then please enlighten me what frontend questions you ask in your interviews.

By the way, only 1 out of 10 frontend developers can answer what the event loop is, according to my experience.

<comment><USER8> I am not saying understanding event loop is not mandatory for senior JS devs. It is just that your question is really obscure. Why not just ask what an event loop is and what are the consequences of that execution model?

<comment><USER5> Some JavaScript developers know the theory, but not all of them. At least you should know how it practically works.

So when you ask "What is the JavaScript event loop?", most will stare at you not knowing what it is. So then I jump to the practical side. They at least should have worked with either setTimeout, async/await and/or events. So then you start asking for practical consequences of the event loop, such as what happens with an infinite loop after setTimeout or await, or during handling of an event. That is a real practical example that they should know. If you don't then you don't know neither theory nor practice.

<comment><USER8> Practice can change tomorrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reading that stuff always makes me feel incredibly stupid (or rather clueless). I wouldn't be able to answer most of those questions off the top of my head. Including this weird clock hand question (which is probably some trivial math that might or might not have been taught to me more than a decade ago and which I never ever actually applied since).

Then I probably have to remind myself that I'm (halfway successfully) running a SaaS platform with tens of thousands of users, so maybe I'm not that clueless after all.

Maybe Google scale isn't for me.

<comment><USER10> > Maybe Google scale isn't for me.

Google employs the very elite of the elite. If you're working there you're probably at the very top of your field. Obviously not every can meet that standard and there's no shame in not being the absolute best.

<comment><USER11> _Google employs the very elite of the elite._

I feel a little sorry for Google's developers. They're told they're brilliant but asked to write software to deliver adverts and track people. They could _literally_ be curing cancer and putting people on Mars if they wanted, and yet they sit in Mountain View working out new things to do with the data about what I clicked on today. It's a huge waste of talent.

<comment><USER12> People who dedicate their lives to curing cancer and putting people on Mars are titans for making verrry verrry wee little dents in those problem areas.

Your typical software engineer slept through the minimum amount of biology coursework required of them and has no special interest in chemistry beyond maybe like, a broscience-level grasp of pharmacology related to research compounds commonly viewed as smart drugs.

If bay area futurism woo is indicative of broader trends among software engineers, this person also has a vague, half-ironic commitment either to superintelligent AI immanentizing the eschaton or brain uploading becoming a hot-swappable replacement for the mortal coil within 20 years. Or both.

A belief that Google's workforce constitutes an addressable vat of brainpower of such raw g that, were it not for the idle concerns of developing adtech, it could turn to curing cancer is a very strange belief.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure what the intention of the OP was but I read it as those engineers could help push those efforts forward by doing what they do best -- writing software. Not all of those involved in the effort to cure cancer are studying chemicals and making drugs. There's also people who have to run some matrix calculations with MATLAB code, or who have to transcribe experiments into excel sheets. It's hard to think that if we took the pool of talent that makes the information-collecting products that Google makes, it wouldn't have any difference in the amount of progress made

<comment><USER12> I elaborated: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23140556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23140556)

Parent comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23124327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23124327)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >At first I thought I would be applying for a software developer position but after we went through my skillset, the recruiter concluded that I would better fit as an SRE.

I've got to say, I've been contacted by recruiters for Google a few times, and it has _always_ been for SRE roles. I got the distinct impression that it's less about whether my skillset fitted being an SRE, but more that they need lots of SREs and have trouble pursuading people to take that job. I'm sure some people want to be SREs, but Google seems to want Software Engineers to become SREs.

<comment><USER15> Why do you feel like it's less glamorous/whatever to be an SRE?

<comment><USER14> The impression I got from talking to the recruiter is that you're spending more of your time ensuring systems work as intended and managing running systems than you are building systems from scratch, and particularly you're not working on the sexy parts of systems - the bits people actually notice,bu instead are focused on making sure those sexy bits actually turn up in a timely manner. It's not a bad thing, it's just a very long way away from what I do, and what I want to do, and the fact that the Google recruiters are always pushing me that way gives me the imipression they struggle to find people for the SRE roles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ah, interview hazing, where having an encyclopedic knowledge that you can regurgitate on command trumps all. What a phenomenal waste of time.

<comment><USER17> When I first started down the path to becoming a software engineer, I never suspected that flashcards would be part of my interview prep as though it were a history course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm probably not as driven as most people here. But I wouldn't want to have SEVEN technical interviews for what seems to be a relatively average opening.

<comment><USER19> For many people the opportunity to double their salary is worth spending a couple of months solving programming puzzles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just reading this post triggered my anxiety. I don't think I'll ever make it though a single one of these FAANG interviews if at all I want to work for one.

</comment><comment><USER21> Getting rejected by Google turned out to be great for the author. He ended up founding a successful company instead. (Browserling)

</comment><comment><USER22> My take away from this is that the bar may have been lower in 2008 when the headcount was lower than it is now despite the headcount having exploded recently. You still get the in-depth system design questions and "tech trivia" that requires a review of the spec for whatever language/technology you interview on, but the algo questions are harder now. Finding the unique set and implementing a binary tree would be "lay up" questions now to most prepared candidates. At the very least those caliber of questions have limited ambiguity and don't require knowledge of any tricks to get optimal solutions.

</comment><comment><USER23> > Unfortunately, I just learned that I'm not getting hired.

Seems like a ton of effort to go through to not get hired. I'm curious as to why he wasn't hired; IMO it seems kinda strange to go through 8 interviews only to be rejected.

<comment><USER24> Google is notoriously bad with these interviews. Most famous case is the Homebrew guy. I got turned down once because I haven't had a degree in CS. They knew that in advance yet they did the whole round.

<comment><USER10> > I got turned down once because I haven't had a degree in CS.

This doesn't make any sense - the employ I'm sure thousands of people without degrees in CS.

<comment><USER24> Amazon took me and others, in fact, during my time one of the most senior engineers did not even finish high school. They don't care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've passed the exact same SRE interview, well enough to be offered follow up interviews for a higher level. I'm not saying that to boast, I'm saying this to remind people that the celebrity developers, whose blogs and tweets we share here, are just as good as you, and more importantly, you can be just as good as them.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Did anyone notices these questions aren't hard on algorithm sides(all algorithm questions in this post are common/trivial) but more about understanding Network(TCP) and Distributed System(Map-Reduce problem).

And the issue about forgoting to initalize data. Is the interview at Google really looking for that perfect solution on a whiteboard? In an interview, it's easy to forgot those thing like. I'm sure we have that moment when debug something and miss some trivial thing

Anyone has done similar SRE interview recently care to share some questions?

</comment><comment><USER26> This is from 2008 it seems.

</comment><comment><USER27> My interview process for SRE in Dublin in 2012 went pretty much exactly the same (procedure-wise - content was different though), and passing the on-site interview felt hard enough that I'm kinda proud of it to this day... But I also had to agree to not ever talk about the questions presented, in case I ever wanted to work for them.

Now I wonder if that provision was alreay in place when that article was written initially, and the author just doesn't and didn't care - or if it had to be installed after such articles started popping up, and Google engineers and recruiters felt like running out of questions people couldn't prepare for :)

</comment><comment><USER28> I like how they asked a map-reduce question. If your previous experiences didn't involve working over massive datasets with distributed computing, you wouldn't have a clue. But if you did your search about your prospective position, you could find and study for the potential interview topics.

They are effectively selecting candidates who have spot-on experience for the position in hand or are willing to put the time to study for it. Is it too much to ask? Probably not for what you would be getting in the next couple of years if you were to keep it up.

</comment><comment><USER29> How is "What's the angle between clock hands when it's 3:15?" a trick question? It's not 0.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was asked that question 2 times in different companies. At the first time I apparently forgot the the Hour stick will move a little bit when the Minute stick move to 15. I guess it's a trick question when we can easily forgot that fact. My brain is train that way that when it's 3 then the Hour stick is at 3...

<comment><USER29> Wow it had not even occurred to me that anyone would not remember that the hour hand ticks forward a bit every minute. Blind spots and all that. Also just reinforces how much I dislike trivia and trick questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> These sorts of interviews do not find good software developers, they simply remove a certain kind of bad (not really) software developers along with a whole host of very good software developers that don't fit a very specific mold (perhaps people who write cheery blog posts about how fun it was? ...weird). Which is fine if you're the company doing the interviewing, but completely time wasting for the interviewee. In aggregate it sounds like abuse and disrespect. It's dismissive of experience, accomplishment and aptitude in favor of training to the test.

People say that Google has changed their tune somewhat over the years, but their creed has had impact throughout the industry. It's a shame.

<comment><USER31> I'm not going to defend this style of interviewing, but I think it's useful to have tests which filter out people who cannot program at all. If you do any hiring you'll know that a surprising proportion of interviewees who make it to an on-site interview for software positions simply know nothing about the subject. When I did interviews at my start-up we'd have a Linux machine connected to a projector for interviewees to use (this is for Linux programmer and sysadmin positions), and a small but significant proportion of the candidates had no idea what to type into the terminal to list files, or what an absolutely trivial program (like loop to 10 printing numbers) did.

<comment><USER30> Sure, can't dispute what you say. There has to be some amount of "you must be this high to ride this ride" but you don't need to measure 7 times or whatever before thinking the first measure was accurate.

I've been on both sides of the interviewing tables many times and the processes that worked the best were the ones that involved telling stories to another another and seeing how the other reacted. You know, actually interviewing, humans having a conversation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ah screw it, I'll be the boy in "the emperor's new clothes". Google sucks! They try to put themselves on cloud9 and look at us "mortals" like we should be grateful for 8 interviews, LOL.

Age has caught up with them, they just refuse to acknowledge it. They are no longer the "hottest" company on the planet yet they keep behaving like they are.

To me personally, Google has become tne old IBM, a giant tech behemoth who cannot move normally and is riding on a single product and old glory.

I would rather work at Microsoft right now than at Google (although I am aware I don't have "qualifications" for neither"

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm going to copy my response from a related thread 2 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22405372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22405372)

\---

I interviewed at Google for an SRE:Systems role around a month ago; I can share my anecdotes.

The first interview put me in contact with a recruiter who would basically be my guide throughout the process, at first he asked me some basic questions to feel out where I was weak and then told me to prepare those weaknesses for the next round.

The next round was 2 phone interviews, lasting about an hour each and over different days, one focused on my programming skills (of which, I have little because sysadmins don't typically do anything relating to data structures) and the second one was surrounding linux internals and debugging (which I was very strong on).

I spent roughly 2 working days worth of time preparing for them.

Preparing for the on-site was pleasant, I was put in touch with another google recruiter who ensured I knew where I was going and what I was doing, they told me that I'd be there the whole day and while they couldn't tell me what I would be asked/who I would meet/what to prepare; they gave me an approximation of the _kind_ of questions, very broadly.

I spent roughly 18 working days preparing in my weak areas, including leetcode/data structures and reading comp-sci papers (paxos and ilk).

On the day, I went through about 5, 1-hour long interviews that focused on various aspects of SRE (one of them being 'googliness'), some were about distributed systems (where the interviewer got hung up on the fact that I said I would use postgres instead of making my own database) and others were heavily programmer focused (linux internals was more about knowing the implementation of 'ls', scripting was all about the kinds of questions you get on leetcode).

I'm not going to lie, it was gruelling, and I'm typically pretty comfortable interviewing;

I thought I'd be fine with these interviews because I'm considered to be "shit hot" in sysadmin/writing glue by my peers, but I guess not, as I'm not a Google-SRE. :)

(sidenote: everything in TFA rings true, including the tips, google recruiters are quite transparent about your process. But they also said that the last stage is not the interview, it's roughly 5 hiring committees that are looking at your application "package" through different lenses)

<comment><USER34> > 'googliness'

What does this mean? How do they evaluate whether someone is sufficiently, um, Googley?

<comment><USER33> They explained that; it's coded word for "culture fit", but it's used as a verb inside google (one example: "Sorry, that wasn't very googly of me").

It's the idea that you're expected to be open to feedback, empathise a lot and be always willing to go above and beyond to help someone.

I actually passed that one. So, I think it's just a jerk test. I think they asked me about if someone was stealing my credit, or the credit of others- what would I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Seven interviews seems a bit... abusive?

</comment><comment><USER36> So how much of that stuff do you actually do day-to-day?

<comment><USER37> Yeah seriously, it seems like a lot of the questions revolve around the TCP stack. Maybe it was a more networking type job?

<comment><USER34> It doesn't seem unreasonable for an SRE position. Presumably the focus of the interview would be quite different if you were applying to work on, say, V8 or the Go compiler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Whenever I read about people's interview experience with Google it sure sounds more stressful than my actual day job. I understand investing the time when youre a new grad, but I have no idea how already employed people find the time to prepare for these interviews …

</comment><comment><USER39> My job interviews at Amazon (2008). [0]

[0]: [https://medium.com/@simon/2008-how-i-got-hired-by-amazon- com...](https://medium.com/@simon/2008-how-i-got-hired-by-amazon- com-314ee8634da9)

</comment><comment><USER40> There are three types of developer. Those who never worked at Google, those who currently work there, and those who used to work there. The third kind are the ones to avoid if you're interviewing for your company.

<comment><USER41> So you can interview current Google employees, but not former ones? Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I doubt they do the eight-separate-interviewer hazing to people with public achievements. Who would stand for it?

" _Go calculate the angle, Linus._ "

<comment><USER41> If you consider homebrew a public achievement, then yes: [https://mobile.twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?la...](https://mobile.twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> For the reference, thats from 2008

</comment><comment><USER44> Sounds like a Quiz, not Interview :)</comment>


The Great College Loan Swindle - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-the-great-college-loan-swindle-w510880 <comment><USER3> I am always amazed at the level of acceptance for these types of injustice there is in the US. Even here, most discussion is about the economics of college degrees, and how to deal with it on an individual level.

While the problem, it seems to me, is entirely one of political choice and justice, and the current situation seems very unfair. Young people from poorer backgrounds seem to be destined for slavery for a large part of their lives, unless they get extremely lucky.

People argue: but his degree is not worth it. On a meta-level that is simply impossible: the guy is a teacher, by definition in his lifetime he will produce much more to society than his education cost. If he can't reasonably pay of his loans the system cannot be fair. He was shortchanged and then punished for it.

Also it seems strange that 10 years after default he still has to pay rehabilitation and his debt is still growing. Is nobody in the US protecting people like him? I know in a situation like that where I live (NL) municipality instances will be all over you and your live will suck for 3 years, but after that your debt will be gone and you can start over.

<comment><USER4> My question is why hasn't he been able to land a full time teaching job in ~14 years? It seems like a full time teaching job would alleviate a lot of that pressure, but the article doesn't seem to mention it.

I understand teachers probably make the lowest salaries in any degree required field, but they can keep their heads above water if they are fully employed. Many family members are teachers, and it's noble but thankless work.

<comment><USER5> Or, teaching not panning out for him, another job of comparable pay to public school teachers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most scorn of universities and loan programs never seem to address a serious problem: Students taking on debt to fund degrees with little market value, or few job prospects. Racking up $100k to get an interdisciplinary degree in women and gender studies might sound awesome, but not at the cost of a school like NYU.[0] I think schools should be required to press upon students prior to taking out these loans honest and factual statistics about their future job prospects, needs for advanced education, and the average graduates ability to pay back the loan.

[0]. [https://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student- loa...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student- loans/29money.html)

<comment><USER7> I think the colleges should have some skin in the game and be at least partially on the hook if the loan defaults. That should prevent some of the completely egregious price gouging.

<comment><USER8> This is really the only path forward: make student debt dischargable. Yes, it will make less people go to college, but too many people going to college is clearly one of the root causes of cyclical skyrocketing costs and increased borrowing.

<comment><USER9> How would reducing the costs of going to college drive down the number of people going to college?

To clarify what I mean: If student loan debt is dischargeable, that means that taking out a loan for college is actually less risky. We should expect more people to do it, not fewer.

<comment><USER10> Companies comfortable offering loans to risky candidates will feel far less comfortable doing so.

There is because there is some point where the ratio between amount of money requested, and expected postgraduate earnings for the chosen degree, would make for a bad deal due to the likelihood of default.

It's less risky for students, but loan providers won't want to overextend themselves to accomodate institutions who promise students the moon and demand sums they won't be able to repay to "give" it to them.

<comment><USER9> Most student loans come from the federal government, and the rates are fixed regardless of risk. So what you and parent are really suggesting is increasing interest rates on student loans, which I totally support. Getting the government out of the student loan business so that the rates can be determined by markets would seem a good first step.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting that the real perpetrators don't get much of Taibbi's scorn. The loan industry are just opportunists, and for the most part students loans have been taken over by the government anyway.

The real criminals here are teachers, parents, and employers, who have created a culture where people are compelled to get completely unnecessary higher education. Here, you need a college degree to be an administrative assistant in an office. In Germany, in contrast, young people can get many white collar jobs after age 16, plus three years of apprenticeships during which they get paid.

<comment><USER12> Quoting the article: "Going to college doesn't guarantee a good job, far from it, but the data show that not going dooms most young people to an increasingly shallow pool of the very crappiest, lowest-paying jobs. There's a lot of stick, but not much carrot, in the education game. [...] the squeeze on the un-degreed grows tighter, increasing further that original negative incentive: Don't go to college, and you'll be standing on soup lines by age 25. "

The article itself explains why teachers and parents and students themselves still seek degree - because alternative is nothing good either.

It is competitions and if you dont compete, you loose for sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> > It is competitions and if you dont compete, you loose for sure.

The wrong move in the game was in my opinion rather to give birth to children if you cannot afford their education.

<comment><USER12> The problem will he solved once there are no more young people. We already have less then two children per couple on average, so it is getting there.

Then again, if your logic makes you claim that majority of population is wrong for having children (including lower middle class and employed honest workers) then maybe the problem is elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> Agree. If an economy is structured where the population can't even sustain itself, that's a sign of a huge systemic problem. People sure like to parrot that though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article doesn't seem to address a few things:

First is that all colleges are not the same,with some colleges offering next to no marginal benefit vs. a high school diploma. Which means there are huge price discrepancies based on quality (DeVry ~$16k/year online vs Ucal @ ~14k/year on campus (instate)).

Also not addressed is mean salary of entry level jobs in your area of study - is it worth spending 100k to get a an accounting degree from a decent program where you can probably get an entry level job that pays $50k? Probably. Same $100k on a degree in social work where the entry level job is $30k? Maybe not?

</comment><comment><USER4> For kids preparing for college lucky enough to read these comments, and parents with kids preparing to go to college, consider this advice:

1\. Always go in-state public funded college and university, it's much, much cheaper. In-state meaning the state the student is currently a resident.

2\. If you must go out of state, make sure the student registers as a state resident after their first year (most states require a year waiting period). This way, you only pay out-of-state tuition for a year. Generally out of state tuitions are 4x or so higher than in-state (it's been a while since I've examined this, so it might be higher or lower).

3\. The cheapest path is to get your AA degree at in-state public community college, then your remaining 2 years at university. Not only is this cheaper, but this allows the student two years to decide their major after some realistic exposure to the various fields and what they pay.

4\. Never attend private colleges without a scholarship, unless you are wealthy. There are two types of private colleges: old and new. The older colleges like Harvard, etc are expensive but bona fide, then new private colleges like ITT Tech, Trump university, etc are generally scammy schools that spend way more on marketing than education. Stay away from these at all costs, they are traps.

5\. Make no mistake, a college education is a huge leg up in the marketplace for jobs. It's no guarantee, but not having one is much, much worse, and will be more so in the future. We live in a service economy, and service jobs require degrees for the most part.

6\. If your field requires a Master's or Ph.D to be employed, that is a big red flag, and you should consider another field. This requirement generally means the field is supersaturated with applicants so much that employers can require an advanced degree for hiring and it's very difficult to not only land the first job, but also move to different employers. Remember, you have 40 years of work in your lifetime.

7\. Outside of perhaps Ivy League, the college you attend doesn't matter. Employers generally want to check a box that says you've earned a degree in your relevant field and that's it.

<comment><USER14> UC still counts you as "out-of-state" even if you stay a year and become a California resident.

[http://ucop.edu/residency/index.html](http://ucop.edu/residency/index.html)

<comment><USER15> You can combine it with point 3: attend community college the first 2 years then transfer. I know at least some CA community colleges let you become an instate student after your first year and even out-of-state tuition at a community college isn't that expensive. In the Bay Area you're likely to pay more in rent than tuition at a community college.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It seems like the root problem is that students cannot declare bankruptcy on student loans. If they could do that then lenders would adjust for risk accordingly which would lower the availability of loans, which would in turn drive tuition down. I know there's an argument that students will just declare bankruptcy after graduating, but if that's the case then the solution would be to make bankruptcy less appealing via disincentives (more penalties for declaring bankruptcy).

Making student loans exempt from bankruptcy is distorting the loan markets and, in turn, tuition. If restricting the availability of loans creates a situation in which the higher education is unavailable to students without financial means, then the state should make free or very low cost higher education available to offset this. The solutions are so obvious that it's pretty clear that the financing of student loans is a giant con at this point.

<comment><USER17> if students could declare bankruptcy there would probably be no student loans. there are already very few private loans available to students without substantial credit history or a cosigner. how could the numbers possibly work out?

to graduate in four years from a state university (paying in-state tuition) costs about $44k. a typical college freshman has close to zero assets and no credit. if they have any income, it's probably a part-time minimum wage job. assuming they don't qualify for any aid, these people need to borrow about $10k each year and likely won't pay any of it back until they get a degree.

now let's pause for a moment. how many ways can you get an unsecured $10k loan with limited to no credit history? they basically don't exist. you would need to build credit for a long time before you got a limit anywhere near that on a credit card, and their whole business model revolves around loaning people more money than they should.

now consider that in the US, about 40% of students fail to get their bachelors in 6 years. obviously these people will not be able to use the degree to obtain employment, and probably will not ever pay down the debt in full unless they enter a lucrative trade that didn't require the degree in the first place. if we assume that the students who graduate are able to repay the loan, they have to pay a significant amount of interest before the lender breaks even on the group of loans. and keep in mind that there's no guarantee that a student who graduates has acquired a degree that actually improves their earning potential.

so tl;dr: it is really hard to offer a reasonable loan of that size to an 18yo with no skills/assets who stands a substantial chance of either not finishing or finishing with a valueless (to the market) degree.

<comment><USER18> You used to be able to discharge student loans through bankruptcy and guess what?? The sky didn't fall down.

However, that was also when a year of college could be paid for by a minimum- wage summer job. Now it's egregiously expensive AND they've got you by the balls.

<comment><USER17> the last time you could discharge student loans in bankruptcy without satisfying special conditions was 1976 in the US. but that was a time where an undergrad degree was relatively cheap, and not many people took out loans in the first place.

I don't disagree that something is seriously messed up in this country's higher education system, but the discharge exemption for student loans is probably one of the few things that keeps the system even slightly economic. like I said above, you cannot just lend huge chunks of money to kids without making any risk assessment and also allow them to default whenever. at least, you can't do this unless your intention is to lose money.

if I had to have a guess, I would say that the main contributor to our outrageous education costs is the government making all these uneconomic loans in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Because of government loan guarantees, the cost of tuition will eventually rise to match the entire net present value of the expected lifetime earnings premium. This could easily be in the millions.

Also, we can expect income-based repayment to become the norm, since most will not be able to afford the payments

<comment><USER20> I'm kind of fond of the idea of people paying a percentage of their income after they get their degree and for X number of years.

I think that's a fantastic idea. For needed professions, it could be X - <USER2> number of years. Inexpensive and attainable education would be a good thing, I should imagine.

<comment><USER21> The x-years and y-% could be based on their future earnings. A sort of tiered system with "marginal" rates. I wonder if such a system could exist.

<comment><USER22> Is this a tongue-in-cheek discussion you guys are having about taxes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As the price of college he lists the sticker price, not the price after whatever deal is worked out (it is often quite significantly less).

But that is a nit. It is a very real, very big, problem. A country needs an educated work force. But the vultures have turned that need into pure profit, at a great cost to people just trying to have a good life.

<comment><USER24> > As the price of college he lists the sticker price, not the price after > whatever deal is worked out (it is often quite significantly less).

I'm not sure to which "deals" you are referring. When I went to college I paid the sticker price for tuition and then some (for housing, books, administrative fees, etc.). I feel like this is another harmful myth that scholarships and grants significantly lower the cost of college when, in reality, for most students they don't.

<comment><USER13> I think the OP's point is that the money a college spends per student does not equal the tuition sticker price (it may be higher or lower), and the average price incurred (cash tuition + debt incurred) for the student is often less then the sticker price...

<comment><USER23> Yes, thanks. I know that the pricing situation is nuts, everyone knows it is nuts (I'm a prof, but not at all involved in admissions or financial aid). The model is to list a large sticker price and give a lot of that back.

My college's web site is an example. [https://www.smcvt.edu/admissions/financial-aid-and- tuition/t...](https://www.smcvt.edu/admissions/financial-aid-and- tuition/tuition-resources.aspx) (I understand that all schools in the US have to have such a page.) It lists the bottom-line summary of the sticker price and then gives you a link to a calculator that you use to figure what it will really cost you, which is typically much less. For example, overall we give back more than half and I assume that our peer institutions do also.

(And, yes, a loan is different than a grant, which is different than work study. My only point is that the end price is often much less than the sticker price.)

All this is not to say that the point of the article is wrong. It is not wrong. I said it was a nit, and I meant that.

<comment><USER25> All accredited colleges in the US are required to provide tuition information - we had to put a 'Net Price Calculator' on our website. There are actually a bunch of student notices required by the government and accreditation groups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The lead of this article is very hyperbolic. Even if a person competely defaults and allows default judgement against them, the maximum allowed penalty is a garnishment of 15% of income after tax. On a salary of $18,000 that would be at most $2,700 or $225 a month. That will be a never ending payment, but it's hardly time to go seppuku.

Aside from the hyperbole, I do think the article has a fair point. And there's a very simple solution. Align the interests of lenders with borrowers. There are a lot of ways to do this. One would be to enable borrowers to declare bankruptcy meaning lenders would not be throwing money around like beads at Mardis Gras.

Another option is to change the terms of students loans to be as special as their permanence is. Require student loans be paid back in terms of x% of income for the x% of years after graduation. This would heavily incentivize loan agencies into ensuring a college education does actually lead to a good job. The reduction in lending would also reduce the cost of education as a whole. As the article mentions, the bloating in tuition and other rates is mostly just a factor of greed. If you offer a product valued as practically priceless, and a _consumer 's_ available income is _x_ then your price is going to approach _x_. 'Mardi gras lenders' push _x_ higher and higher to no end.

Ultimately there are lots of solutions. But I expect we'll do nothing. As the 15% I mentioned above gaurantees that even 'bad loans' are good, from the perspective of a lender. Even if somebody gets stuck working in aggregate $30k jobs (inflation adjusted) for the next 50 years, that's $1.5 million with 15% there equaling out to $225k. That's an extremely healthy profit even on defaults. To New Orleans we go!

<comment><USER6> Default would tank your credit score and possibly jepordize future job, housing, and banking opportunities. Even if it's brutal, I think it's better to avoid default if at all possible.

<comment><USER26> Completely agreed which is why I think it's bizarre that the loans cannot be dismissed. Bankruptcy has similar effects and lasts for 10 years! The reason I mention it is he was talking about $471/month with 0 principal progress on a salary of $18,000 was driving him to literal suicide. At that point taking the 15% and consequences is undoubtedly a better solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's an interesting conundrum (for my family at least). My father was very highly educated (Professor Emeritus of semiconductor physics/EE at a major University, you've likely heard of it). I started out putting a couple of years in toward a BSCE at that same University, but I abandoned it because I already had work experience, and the BSCE was just a consolation prize -- the only value it would have had is if I was going to pursue a doctorate/academic career. That would have come with a prospect of a lot of student debt. As it turned out, I ended up in a career making more than a trauma surgeon, but without a mountain of $250K student loans. Today, I have 6 kids, and the two oldest are at the ages where they need to contemplate college. One definitely has their sights on University, the other is ambivalent. What I tell all of them is that there is nothing wrong with wanting to become an Electrician, Plumber, Pipefitter or any of the other work trades. All are worthy careers and can be very lucrative.

</comment><comment><USER28> > Tuition for a halfway decent school now frequently surpasses $50,000 a year.

Where is the source for this statistic? The only universities which I know to charge that high are small private liberal arts colleges or the Ivies.

</comment><comment><USER29> How is this the fault of banks? Isn't the federal government the largest underwriter of loans these days?

</comment><comment><USER30> Why would it be in a university's interests to accumulate such a large amount of cash?

<comment><USER31> Because they are basically becoming hedge funds with an university attached.

'I was going to donate money to Yale. But maybe it makes more sense to mail a check directly to the hedge fund of my choice' \- Malcolm Gladwell tweet

[https://www.thenation.com/article/universities-are- becoming-...](https://www.thenation.com/article/universities-are-becoming- billion-dollar-hedge-funds-with-schools-attached/)

<comment><USER28> I think this statement only holds for private universities -- public ones are struggling financially.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/10/midwest...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/10/midwestern- public-research-universities-funding/542889/)

<comment><USER31> UVA - $5 Billion

[http://endowments.com/university-of- virginia/](http://endowments.com/university-of-virginia/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> [http://rollingjubilee.org](http://rollingjubilee.org)

</comment><comment><USER33> as soon as we are angry enough to riot, they will find the money to forgive our loans.

yes, it has come to this.

</comment><comment><USER34> How does anyone expect high school graduates to make responsible decisions regarding loans and choice of major when the overwhelming majority of his grads exit highschool financially illiterate, with the nonsensical idea that any college degree is good enough?

How many times have you heard the expression "do what you love, and the money will come?"

The culture in the U.S. is in dire need of a return to merit, as well as drastic changes to our education system; and, no, the answer is not more funding.

Also I believe that government aid should be restricted to degrees with a minimum relative ROI. Education for the sake of culture is no longer useful when you have an increasingly incompetent workforce.</comment>


Repossessing Degrees - <AUTHOR> https://www.jefftk.com/p/repossessing-degrees <comment><USER2> Seems like this would be the final knife in the coffin for actual education in the US. At long last, college would be nothing more than credential signaling. Who cares what you actually learned, or that you finished all the coursework for your degree, or how well you did in those classes. All that would matter would be: did you pay off those loans?? And now you've actually created a generation of indentured servants.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the root problem that's trying to be solved? Allowing people to finally discharge student loans in bankruptcy, or increasing private liquidity in education lending?

This seems like it all reverts to a tax policy in the end, as these loans are guaranteed by the federal government. We either tax everyone (free college, allowing bankruptcy discharge) or individuals (no discharge, pay back loan).

The questions should be: what do want as a society, and "will allowing students to discharge public loan debt cause a greater GDP increase than the loss of tax revenue from them not paying back the loan"

As long as the fed gov is guaranteeing them, it's just "taxes" with extra layers of obfuscation. We pretended they were loans and now people are trying to solve a loan problem instead of a tax problem.

It will become a loan problem if/when the loans are private. And a policy problem at that point if employers can no longer get educated workers.

I've always argued that the most business friendly thing a gov can do is provide highly educated workers at a steep subsidy for businesses to use as human resources. Always astounds me when "pro business" people want to slash education.

</comment><comment><USER4> Repossessing an asset has nothing to do with punishing the borrower and everything to do with giving the lender something they can sell to make themselves as whole as possible.

Being able to buy a degree at public auction is absurd.

</comment><comment><USER5> I had this happen, in a small way, after grad school. After I graduated, the university revoked some small stipend I was getting (a few hundred dollars) because I had somehow failed to qualify in the final semester. After that, they refused transcripts until they were repaid, so they pretty much had me over a barrel.

Got the last laugh, though, as they hammered me for donations to the alumni association for the next two decades. Not one penny.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm no expert on the topic, but it seems likely to me that there is a significant number of people defaulting on student loans but did not finish their degree program. I'd also speculate that the people who did complete their degree program are less likely to be in default than those who dropped out.

</comment><comment><USER7> At this point, I would gladly zero out my student loans in exchange for my undergrad and grad schools disavowing me.</comment>


Ask HN: Why not decrease the 30% AppStore fee for small companies? - <AUTHOR> Its annoying to hell out of me. My sponsorship with Microsoft is running out, meaning I have to pay for the VM that my iOS app is running on.
If I subtract my server cost + 33% AppStore fee, there is not much profit left.
Why cant Apple give some slack to indie developers with low app income? 30% fee is way too much.
This duopoly in the smartphone market is very, very bad! <comment><USER2> It's actually not a duopoly, but two monopolies:

If you're on iOS, you have to eat the Apple App Store cut.

If you're on Android, you have to eat the Google Play Store cut.

They don't actually compete with each other in any meaningful way, so there's not even price competition between them. As long as they're able to control their respective platforms and ensure they're the only successful app stores on them, they can charge whatever they want, and have no incentive to lower their rates.

</comment><comment><USER3> At this point I think Apple feels like there are enough apps in the app store so they don't have an incentive to drive more participation. If anything, the fixed cost of vetting an app should be the same for the big guy and the little guy and the big guy can spread that over more revenue so Apple could afford to give a break to the big guys, not the little guys.</comment>


Spotify: Users will be able to revoke access tokens from August 9th - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/spotify/web-api/issues/126#issuecomment-234998645 <comment><AUTHOR> For more context, the only way to revoke tokens used to be to delete your account: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12116464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12116464)</comment>


DNA sequencing progress has stagnated - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/erlichya/status/1156195896067088394 <comment><USER2> Why would sequencing follow Moore's law when it isn't really related to computing? Sequencing technology is limited by our knowledge of chemistry, physics, and mechanical engineering to apply the concepts. None of which is doubling every 2 years.

There are 3rd gen sequencing techs that provide much longer reads than previous tech like Illumina but they also get much higher rate of erroneous reads.

Another point is current sequencing tech is enough for tasks that were just unfeasible to do couple of years ago. Such as HiC (Extracting 3D structure of chromosomes with sequencing) or more recent applications like DNA Microscopy, where you can construct a very high resolution visual image of a cell just by using sequencing.

Our usage of genomic data isn't really limited by sequencing tech since DNA is such a complex structure that we don't even fully understand the data we currently have.

<comment><USER3> This is exactly right. The Moore's law slide is a cute comparison that has been used to try and demonstrate that sequencing volume has outpaced our computational ability in one context or another. Variously, it is used as commentary on computers' ability to keep up, our need for better storage , our lack of trained professionals, and so on.

Dollars/Mb is not a super-meaningful statistic anyway. If you include quality/value (either as raw base confidence or the value of that base in the context of longer read lengths), the Dollar/Base/Value number has likely kept falling. It's just hard to quantify the "Value" as a number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As somebody who has worked in genomics for decades, I don't really see progress in DNA sequencing as being motivated by extrinsic factors. Put another way, there really isn't enough scientific discovery being driven by new sequence data to justify the spending. Many articles have been written claiming that sequencing is going to revolutionize medicine. It's been a very useful research tool, and _some_ genomics has been very valuable medically, but it doesn't live up to the hype.

<comment><USER5> To add to this, I worked in melanoma genomics for 2 years. Off the top of my head I cannot think of a single cancer drug on the market who's target was discovered through NGS.

It was great as a research tool. But I have yet to see it improve patient outcomes

<comment><USER6> It's not quite _discovering_ a target from NGS, but lots of existing cancer drugs are targeted based on genotyping tumours. Breast cancer is the classic one, where, say, if you can quickly determine if your sample is Her2+ your treatment plan drastically changes. Now, getting enough cancer cells in your tumour sample to reliably genotype at that stage is a separate hard problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The key problem is that DNA sequencing for individuals is not useful (yet) for that individual. Right now DNA sequencing is useful for scientific research and for industrial research. But the current price is basically fine for that; it isn't anywhere near the main component of the cost of research.

If there were a reason to get the DNA of each American sequenced, the price would go down drastically. Like if there was any real medical usefulness of having your DNA sequenced. But right now there isn't.

It's kind of like the Apple I era of personal computing. It's finally cheap enough that individuals can get this technology themselves. There just isn't really a great reason to, besides interested hobbyists.

</comment><comment><USER8> 23andme will let you download a zip file of your sequence data. But if I recall the data had only about 4 million nucleotides. So I assumed that I need to get their "baseline" human full genome somewhere and my file is just the difference.

But the above assumption can't be correct given that it still costs $1000 for a full sequence according the the parent article. Can anyone clarify ?

<comment><USER9> 23andMe ran a microarray analysis, which probes your genome at a specific set of locations.

If you want to know how your genome differs versus what's called the "reference genome," then you'd need a whole-genome sequence. That process shards up your genome, sequences it, aligns the pieces back to the human reference, and then calculates a "consensus" that represents the software's best guess as to how your genome relates to the reference.

Then they could provide you with a diff of the consensus with respect to the reference, which would probably be distributed to you in a VCF file (variant call format).

This process is the one that costs more money versus 23andMe's $99.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Moore's Law in context is doubling every 2 years? This isn't general news; you'd need to be very clued in to understanding what the problem is. Doubling every 2 years is not the natural state of things. That sort of growth rate is hard to maintain even from truly trivial starting points (my favorite example is the wheat & chessboard parable [0]).

The news is processes that don't stagnate fairly quickly after getting past the low hanging fruit of research and development. Processors have maintained an exponential growth rate for ~50 years and that has completely revolutionised every aspect of society and realistically probably our relationship with the world at large. We don't expect things to do that, and although it is taking a lot longer than everyone expected at some point the transistor doubling will have to end.

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

</comment><comment><USER11> In order for the public to really want their genes sequenced,there will have to be privacy in place. Nobody should have access to the data. Just deliver it and provide analysis tools. Even then, it something you only need to do once. Demand won't get higher than that, so demand isn't really going to be a big price driver.

<comment><USER12> Yep. I refuse to have my DNA sequenced by any of these direct to consumer businesses that think they're going to be the next platforms and start making money on the back end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe divert resources DNA synthesis? Sequencing is very cheap per base, especially compared to a few years ago

</comment><comment><USER14> This doesn't take the increase of read lengths into account, which also is of value, not only pure read depth.

<comment><USER15> It does... the graph is price per megabase, not per read.

(or at least, it's supposed to)

But, I don't think the plot is all that accurate anymore though... given the cost/GB and raw capacity of the newer Novaseq's, the cost per individual experiment is just as much a function of how multiplexed the machine can run.

<comment><USER16> Read length improves read quality, especially for sequences with lots of repetition. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15534325](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15534325)

<comment><USER15> Mappable sequence isn't what is being measured here... it's just $/Mbase

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Quality may have improved though.</comment>


Ask HN: What CI/CD tool are you using to deploy to Kubernetes? - <AUTHOR> I am looking for a CI/CD tool (on-premise/cloud) that provides the most pain-free way to set up deployment pipelines targeting differently labeled cloud environments (Dev, QA, Staging, etc..) and promoting services from one to the next. <comment><USER2> Microtica ([https://microtica.com](https://microtica.com)).

You can create separate environments with one or multiple Kubernetes clusters. You can create a Kubernetes infrastructure for AWS in 15mins from the UI and you can also connect your existing Kubernetes cluster.

Deployment of services and monitoring through integrated dashboard, you can view and monitor deployments, pod logs etc.

There is no vendor lock-in, all resources created on your AWS account are done in a cloud-native way so you can continue operate the infrastructure without Microtica if you would like to do so.

Support for Kubernetes deployments targeting differently labeled cloud environments is in our roadmap and will be available soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> CircleCi, Jenkins, Google Cloud Build

Want to look at Argo

Pain is relative, the least painful setup depends on information beyond what you have posted this far.

</comment><comment><USER4> concourse</comment>


Show HN: Exanaview Author – Real-Time Augmented Reality Spatial Authoring App - <AUTHOR> Product Site: https://www.exanaview3d.com/
Exanaview Author is an Augmented Reality Spatial Authoring App that basically turns the real world environment into an immersive 3D canvas that can be carved, reshaped, and have objects placed into it, all in real-time.
- Users can change the size and shape of a real world environment by cutting openings in the walls, floor, and ceiling and creating spaces inside the openings.
- Users can also convert any existing objects in the real world environment into a 3D AR model and manipulate it.
The app is powered by Exanaview, a patent pending real-time 3D modeling engine that basically brings sketch-up style authoring directly to an AR device such as a smart phone, tablet, headset, or smart glasses.
The IOS app is available here: https://www.exanaview3d.com/exanaview-author
Comments and feedback on the app are welcome!  You can submit them here: firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><AUTHOR> Some more details:

The problem being solved:

Current AR objects don't utilize the physical space of the real world environment.

\- AR object placement in the physical environment is obstructive, often blocking the user's view of the physical environment.

\- AR objects appear to "float" and not look natural within the real world environment.

\- Occlusion helps to convey immersion, but the AR content still doesn't efficiently utilize the physical space of the real world environment.

The Solution:

Exanaview is an Augmented Reality Spatial Authoring Technology that applies real-time modeling to the real world environment along with occlusion effects to create AR spaces that are embedded in the structures of the real world environment.

\- This allows AR objects to be inserted into the authored AR regions to correctly utilize the real world environment's physical space.

\- The AR objects are embedded into the physical structures of the real world environment and don't block the user's view of the physical environment.

\- The AR objects look more natural within the real world environment.

The Applications:

\- Architecture Engineering Construction (AEC): Author and edit designs in the real world environment to validate them.

\- Interior Design: Author and change floor, wall, and ceiling decorations. Author and change structures and fixtures.

\- Renovation: Modify and restructure the physical layout of the real world environment. Add additional rooms, floors, and/or expand rooms.

\- Travel/Recreation/Sports/Entertainment (Airports,museums,arenas,theaters): Spatially embed 3D objects and information throughout the physical environment.

See demos of the Exanaview Technology here: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0saGV54vMrE7CxB4hM9FOg/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0saGV54vMrE7CxB4hM9FOg/videos)</comment>


We're Hipsters using Node.js and Mongo, and we love it - <AUTHOR> http://goldfirestudios.com/blog/103/We%E2%80%99re-Hipsters-using-Node.js-and-Mongo%2C-and-we-love-it

<comment><USER2> From the comments...

>You haven't shipped anything and you're already pontificating on your artistry? You might be hipsters.

Welp, that sums it all up. Not much substance otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't believe everything you read in the comments. We've shipped several games and have been developing for the web for over a decade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks very link-baity to me. The whole linked article lacks substance and is basically summarised by: "Somebody on the internet called us hipsters because we've got this and this in our software stack. We don't know what we are, but the software is awesome. And check our kickstarter page".</comment>


Ubuntu 11.10 To Switch From GDM To LightDM - <AUTHOR> http://digitizor.com/2011/05/12/ubuntu-11-10-lightdm/

<comment><USER3> It looks as if Ubuntu is making good progress on the user interface, despite the current apparent loss of functionality with Unity. Having well designed and user friendly features is only one part of the equation though. To really gain popularity they will need to be able to persuade hardware manufacturers to ship with Ubuntu installed by default, or at least as a dual boot option. So far this has proven difficult to achieve, and it's hard to buy such a system via any common distribution channel, such as supermarkets.

<comment><USER4> Part of this has to do with the cost of Ubuntu. I'm not talking paying developers to make sure it works on the machine, but the actual cost that Canonical charges for the ability to use the Ubuntu logo and becoming "certified"; It's not a trivial amount of money by any stretch.

Anyone can preinstall Ubuntu on a machine and release it, they just can't say it is Ubuntu specifically or use the logos.

And I don't advocate not paying it or not becoming certified, we are considering it currently but I can say that management has balked a few times when we've brought it up has been due to the amount of money required up front.

<comment><USER5> _Who_ are considering becoming certified?

<comment><USER4> The company I work for. We are a fairly small ODM, and while I don't want to say our name I'm not hard to find on the Internet, and I know I bragged about getting my job (I get paid to work on Linux, still can't believe my luck)

<comment><USER6> I imagine the concern on Canonical's part is that they will field a significant part of the support flood from new users. Of course, the OEM/ ODM will probably get the bulk of support traffic (with some falling on the retailer), the "pilot" from the netbook/ubuntu probably gave them insight. If they structure the deal correctly, and have an auditable way for the ODM and Canonical to determine the support costs/ unit sold that could be a way to get the deal done. Tell those business coworkers of yours to keep iterating on the deal they are presenting Canonical. I can't believe there's not an equitable way to get that deal done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the Ubuntu team's willingness to move the platform forward. Even if that means making controversial decisions.

<comment><USER4> I'm not quite sure how changing the login manager counts as a controversial decision unless you were meaning just the unity issue. The login manager has one main job and really shouldn't be a huge convoluted mess of code (from experience GDM is). I'm excited about this change although I've never heard of lightdm until this story.

<comment><USER8> Reading through the other comments on this post tells me that there is definitely some controversy over this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm wondering if this means I'll have to jump through hoops _again_ to not have everybody know what usernames are available on my computer.

<comment><USER10> Now would be a great time to file that feature request. LightDM folks have about 6 months to get it fixed (that is, _if_ it's broken)

<comment><USER9> Does that mean it doesn't support hiding usernames yet? I'm still trying to figure that out.

<comment><USER11> Did you try setting load-users=false under [UserManager] in /etc/lightdm.conf?

<comment><USER9> I didn't install anything yet. I just googled for it to find out if it will be possible, since that was a rather large hassle during the last switch, and just recently got fixed and is now available as a checkbox option in the preferences.

I found lots of articles and developer resources, but haven't found the documentation for it on the web yet. I assume that will change as exposure increases.

<comment><USER10> You can check. I installed lightdm in a couple minutes. Auto-login didn't work (it was on a shared desktop), there was some terminal keyboard weirdness and I reverted the change. Running "dpkg-reconfigure lightdm" allowed me to easily revert back to gdm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think this is the path that Ubuntu should follow, replace current pieces of software with lighter and smaller solutions.

You can always replace them with more advances packages through apt-get.

<comment><USER13> > I think this is the path that Ubuntu should follow, replace current pieces > of software with lighter and smaller solutions.

I fully agree, but am not sure this is an example of that. The article says LightDM uses WebKit. Loading an entire html rendering engine for a login manager seems like overkill.

I guess this explains why LightDM is smaller than GDM in code size - but is it smaller in total size when including all necessary libraries?

Now, some of this might be offset if you have WebKit loaded anyhow as a shared library. This seems unlikely, though,

1\. This is the login manager - it's before you load your desktop and web browser. (It might save loading it later though.) 2\. The default browser in Ubuntu, Firefox, is not WebKit based. Neither is Opera for that matter (but it is not as popular). 3\. The most popular WebKit based browser, Chrome, bundles its own version of WebKit - so there would be no sharing anyhow.

<comment><USER4> Empathy (the default IM client) uses webkit to render it's themes. It is quite likely to be a shared library. On natty, webkit is fairly hefty at 24MB but it doesn't take Empathy long to load at all. And by the time your login manager has started /usr is already mounted, assuming you are not using their default partitioning which is one huge partition.

<comment><USER13> It would be interesting to know how many users use Empathy. I don't myself, and maybe I'm not representative, but I don't think it is that many - <USER2> seems more popular among people I know.

I don't follow the /usr bit - what does mounting /usr have to do with loading or not loading WebKit?

WebKit is around 24MB, which is as you say quite hefty, but it's even worse as it depends on some other libraries - sqlite, libpng, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The blueprint (how features are proposed for ubuntu) is at [https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-o- ligh...](https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-o-lightdm)

</comment><comment><USER15> Does LightDM have all the support GDM does for non-user/password login capabilities, warning banners, etc?

<comment><USER16> PAM is the standard and it doesn't get more secure, flexible and expandable than PAM. LightDM is PAM compliant so I am not expecting any trouble.

<comment><USER15> PAM is the standard, yes, but the DM has to support different PAM features (such as smart-card login).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ubuntu choosing a different default display manager is hardly newsworthy, would you seriously discuss Windows or OS X swapping some code behind the login window?

I would be more interested in hearing about Canonical putting lots of thought and their weight behind an improved desktop experience developed independently of the current looks and functionality of Windows, especially since for the moment they are _the_ GNU-Linux-on-the-desktop company.

<comment><USER18> It's newsworthy when that code is part of the open source community, there are political implications of the switch, and Ubuntu is part of a larger effort to get more people to use GNU/Linux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's fantastic that Ubuntu is pushing to improve stuff, but it worries me the amount of old stable code they are ripping out.

<comment><USER20> GDM is not a good example of "old stable code" that's being ripped out on the initiative of Ubuntu, since it has recently seen a rewrite upstream, among the reasons for which was bit rot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hated it when Ubuntu switched from Gnome to Unity by default, but I like this move away from GDM. If there's one thing in Ubuntu that's less customizable (in terms of look-and-feel) than Unity, it's GDM.

</comment><comment><USER22> While it looks like Ubuntu is throwing caution in the wind in many respects, I like that this is bringing attention to overlooked projects and attempting to clean up some old messes.

</comment><comment><USER23> Matthew Garrett opinion on the matter : <http://www.advogato.org/person/mjg59/diary/296.html>

</comment><comment><USER24> I like mingetty <http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-546544.html>

</comment><comment><USER25> Surely GDM will still be available as a package though...? If so, does the choice of default login manager really matter?

<comment><USER26> Ubuntu is all about the ease of use. How do you explain to your non-technical wife, for example, what a login manager is, what it does and why you'd want a better, lighter one? I like this change. I wish they'd switch away from Gnome entirely and go with something like XFCE by default. I want my DE to take up as little resources as possible out of the box.

<comment><USER27> Unfortunately, there are too many standard programs out there that need Gnome to run. I can't see Ubuntu using XFCE but still requiring Gnome installed; for newbies that would not be worth the effort. XFCE has a steeper learning curve than Gnome for people coming from Windows.

<comment><USER28> does this still apply with gnome3? it does not seem very close to a windows experience to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Rate my startup idea "Be Caller Nine" - <AUTHOR>

I have always been fascinated with telephony programming (thanks, "War Games") and radio call-in contests where you have to "be caller nine" in order to win a prize.
Well, I have now developed a system that would allow any person/group/event/company/podcaster to run one of these call-in style contests just by administrating the incoming calls through a browser (instead of a giant 300 line switchboard like radio stations have). I have a working prototype, and the few people that have seen it thought it was a pretty neat idea.
My question is, would there be a market for this sort of thing? Would people/groups be willing to pay to be able to run such a contest?
I imagine this being used for things like: live podcasts that have sponsorships; conferences; internet radio stations; college radio stations; school fundraiser events; ad-hoc internet events (think twitter chats); etc...
What do you think? <comment><USER2> I was a DJ and program manager for my university's radio station, and based on my experience I think there's a much larger opportunity here. Firstly, to answer your question, yes I think non-profit radio stations in particular would be quite interested in something like this, as they can't usually afford more than a 1 or 2-line phone system.

Now, the larger opportunity. If you could make it a less-specialized system and aim it at radio stations, I think you'd really have something. The biggest problem we had with taking calls on the air wasn't so much that we couldn't afford the phone lines, but that we couldn't afford the call-screener. If you had a system that could simulate let's say 10 lines, whereby people call in, it plays an automated screening message asking them their name and purpose of their call, and then it transcribed that onto the DJ's computer screen and allowed them to pick which calls to answer while the rest remain on hold, that would be awesome!

I don't doubt this could probably be done with some combination of Google Voice and Grasshopper. Then again, they don't market their products to this niche the way you could. The biggest hurdle with B2B is acquiring the customers, which often takes a focused message. But I digress.

<comment><USER3> Awesome idea. As for how, with the Twilio API I think you could do the transcribe bit.

[http://www.twilio.com/docs/api/2008-08-01/twiml/record#trans...](http://www.twilio.com/docs/api/2008-08-01/twiml/record#transcribe)

<comment><USER4> This would be a cinch with Twilio! Great idea and good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good reverse pattern research:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=%22winning+radio+contests%22>

By offering up a specific number of channels (i.e. incoming ports for calls) you could also specify what percentage of busy rings you could anticipate (example: Erlang/Engset calculations) to give the adrenaline effect that is more desirable -- hearing a "sorry you are caller # 4" vs a fast busy.

You could also play back an advertisement for 20 seconds saying that to be registered as a caller you need to listen to this or their calling party NPA- NXX-XXXX will be removed from the call count listing.

Sell the 20 seconds of ad time to local businesses saying things like "mention Blogcaster offer 14 to get 20% off your next meal" or unique one time numbers used for Amazon or other discounts where those numbers can be manufactured.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like the classic case of developing a thing because you think it's cool, not because you've seen any _demonstrated need_ for it. Even if there is some demand you probably have little chance at getting in front of the decision makers, if you don't even know who they are already. I'd say 99/100 times this enough to know you should immediately abort any plans of turning it into a business. Maybe put it up somewhere, promote it a bit, and let people enjoy it, but don't try to make it into something it isn't.

On the other hand maybe this could eventually lead you to something that could be very successful. While trying to sell this you may find that there are many other unmet needs in the market. Maybe you can develop a whole suite of similar tools. This might be as good a place to start as anything else.

<comment><USER7> While you have a point that you need a market, perhaps rather than just "giving up" when you have no audience, you instead try as hard as you can to build one right now, and ask them what they think of your idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> cool. i think the ideas that take services that were previously available only to bigger corporations and make them accessible to everyone (ala polleverywhere.com) are almost always useful. you might want to look in to developing in other mediums other then calling - texting or emailing in are also good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, texting could also a part of this, I should have mentioned it.

<comment><USER8> if you need some advice with US shortcodes for texting shoot me an email.. i spent some time dealing with this for a different idea

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do radio stations really have that many phone lines though? I'm not sure what the benefit of that would be; just let the carrier create the circuit or not, no? It certainly sounds like a good idea if the alternative is maintaining that level of infrastructure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it may not be mostly for radio stations... I was thinking more of taking this "radio contest" construct/analogy and letting other people/groups recreate it w/o needing that sort of infrastructure. The contestants would immediately relate to what's happening, but instead of calling a radio station, they are calling another entity (podcaster, event, group).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can definitely see this on streaming radio apps like ShoutCast. Great idea Chad!

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems like this is 1 feature which might be interesting to bloggers/podcasters. Is there a more generalized "podcaster sweepstakes platform" you could build? Help bloggers/podcasters engage their audiences more around giveaways/sweepstakes to generate buzz and attention, track brand impressions/dollars, present network of advertisers, etc... I'm not a big blogger or podcaster so I wouldn't likely be the best person to design this product to solve my problems. But reach out to real users/partners/potential customers. They'll likely tell you what to build.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think executionally it's a great idea. The thing is - telephones were always used as an input channel because people were listening to the radio and NOT doing something else. Maybe there's a live tv application here - maybe event programming makes sense (you could sell this off to a progressive experiential marketing agency - Jack Morton/etc.) for promotional elements.

The long and short of it is - think of the required use/application and where this actually fits. Or if not, create a use for it and monetize.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is there a way to make it useful in an asynchronous context? I think the kernel is smart, but the 9th caller issue seems less pertinent in a web-based world. However, the notion of creating a reward system for attention and action could be the start of something big.

Right now I imagine the evaluation of such a purchase would be: "cool, but I can just say "the first person to send me an email with an answer to X" wins something."

Cool idea though, stick with it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hey Chad, too bad about your original idea. I liked that one. Anyways, I think you need to think where contests are headed, especially when considering conferences, live podcasts, etc. Many people are going the SMS route, so if the app could integrate both phone calls and SMS, I think that would be fancy. Just my 2 cents. See you next week.

</comment><comment><USER15> Think its a neat idea, and could have a lot of uses from radio to podcasts, etc. What APIs/telecom libs are you currently using? Have you looked into Voice XML/ccXML?

I'm interested in writing some open source telcom APIs/server so I'm always curious to hear someone's thoughts that might be a potential user.

</comment><comment><USER16> As a marketing event producer at a multimedia company I say absolutely yes there is a market for this concept. I wish It was available now. It adds tremendous value to sponsorship packages and a measurable outcome for driving people to a website, event, etc ... everything other than television, print, and radio

</comment><comment><USER17> Seems like this would be in demand, especially as more people start producing their own videocast and audiocasts.

If you target the blogger market, and many of them use Skype, then you can implement your idea as a skype/justin add-on. It'll be easier to market by piggybacking on a larger solution/platform.

</comment><comment><USER18> One company I recently purchased from (www.bonobos.com) has had some success marketing via rewarding consumers for attention. Their various strategies got people a little more involved than just listening and calling a phone line, but I think it's an interesting concept.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good idea, I think there are many low-power radio stations with limited resources that could utilize something like this. Also, the concept could be extended for local businesses to run phone-in contests when running a TV or radio ad.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a great idea, and I think the power of it is that it's essentially a raffle but stepping around the regulations that make doing so illegal without government permission.

</comment><comment><USER21> Do DJs and what not actually wait for the nth caller? I always just assumed they just grabbed a line and, woo hoo, that's the winner.

<comment><USER22> I've been a DJ on several commercial radio stations in medium sized markets and legally we have to keep track due to contesting rules put in place by the CRTC or some other part of law. That being said if it's a lesser contest for tickets or something then nobody will be really paying attention and we just sort of eyeball it on the phone system with no screener needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> most of your responses are from "super techies". They may not be your target.One of your targets should be the folks that stay at home or listen on the radio...there are lots of us now...consider the demograhics. The "over the hill gang".

</comment><comment><USER24> I like it!</comment>


Commented Version of a LaTeX File to Create PDF ebooks & A6 Booklets - <AUTHOR> http://www.mostlymaths.net/2010/12/commented-version-of-latex-file-to.html

<comment><USER2> I love this, RBerenguel. Thank you so much for sharing this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow Carl, you are really welcome. If you have any question or suggestion for the comments, please ask :)</comment></comment>


NZ government leaks on TPP: copyright terms will go to life plus 70 years - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2015/10/06/nz-government-leaks-on-tpp-co.html <comment><USER2> Why not 700 years? 7000? We all know that in practice they're going to keep extending it every time early-20th-century works near the end of copyright, so why not just own up to it?</comment>


Rust, Julia, and Go: Disruptive New Programming Languages - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qCH7Y2rc_w <comment><USER2> From the description :

> designed to keep the best of the legacy languages but are re-engineered from > the ground up to meet the challenges of the modern wired world.

So they're not really disruptive...</comment>


Flipkart (the amazon of India) signs deal to kill net neutrality in India - <AUTHOR> http://www.medianama.com/2015/04/223-flipkart-net-neutrality-airtel/

<comment><USER2> The article's headline does not even make sense:

"Flipkart signs up for Airtel's Net Neutrality violating Airtel Zero platform"

How does one sign up for _Airtel 's_ net neutrality?

</comment><comment><USER2> The Amazon of India _is_ amazon.in</comment>


Ask HN: How does https://flash.android.com access my locally stored adb keys - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
I noticed that https://flash.android.com is able to access my local adb keys stored on my local filesystem in ~/.android/adbkey . It does this after pressing Get Started on the page above and clicking agree to the dialog asking you if it can access you adb keys.
How is this possible? Is there some hidden api in chrome that google is using to access the local file system, or is there a more mundane explanation involving some unknown api?
Thanks all. <comment><USER2> You need to preinstall the Android USB driver, and approve access:

My guess is WebUSB API: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/USB](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/USB)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another addendum is that it does not trigger the authorize keys dialog on my android device, which is further proof that it is reading keys that are already authorized from the computer</comment>


HackMIT Admissions Puzzle 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://command.hackmit.academy <comment><USER2> Looking for a fun challenge? Check out this year's HackMIT Admissions Puzzle! The challenges range from steganography to computer systems security. The first 50 solvers get auto admission to HackMIT 2020. Happy puzzling!</comment>


The Immigration Debate We Need - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/27/opinion/the-immigration-debate-we-need.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0 <comment><USER2> Economics is one "science" where it is quite easy to manipulate data to promote anything you want to "prove". I don't find the arguments presented to be persuasive at all. The proof that illegal immigrants take jobs from lower skilled citizens is far from obvious, given it is hard to identify these folks in any quantifiable way sufficient to demonstrate the connection.

<comment><USER3> This wasn't an article trying to prove that immigration is horrible. He was simply pointing out that there is a lot in question that needs to be discussed, and that it is unproductive to call the other side racist and xenophobic which seems to be the mode of discussion right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a life long Democrat, as of late I've felt a chilling effect for the ideas presented in this article. I've genuinely felt confusion when I hear my friends advocating for what in the 90s would be called neo-conservative views.

<comment><USER3> You've felt a chilling effect over the idea that we need to discuss the pros and cons of immigration??? I'm not surprised you are confused.</comment></comment>