How Firebase Interviewed Software Engineers - <AUTHOR> https://startupandrew.com/posts/how-firebase-interviewed-software-engineers/ <comment><USER3> > I don't believe we ever lost a candidate due to them not being willing to > take our test. The strongest candidates take their job search seriously and > are willing to devote a fair amount of time to landing the right job.

This is the part that didn't ring true, at least for me. I believe that there are some candidates would not complain. But if I am good engineer, odds are that I already have a job that works well for me. Maybe not the perfect job, but working well enough that you'll have to give more incentive than just a job being available before I'd spend a day on a take-home, unpaid project. So according to the quote above, I'm not the strongest candidate because I'm not willing to devote a fair amount of time to landing the right job.

Maybe from the hiring manager's point of view, that is even true. But I've already landed the right job. I work there, every day. If you want to poach folk like me from a job that is already right, 6 hour take-home tests aren't the answer. Give us something quicker. Maybe not easier... I believe a challenging interview process is fair. But quicker.

<comment><USER4> [author here]

If you're already happy with your current job, and we can't convince you that our company is potentially a much better opportunity for you, then this is working as intended.

Interviews are expensive for the company too, so it only makes sense to invest time in someone who really is excited about switching.

<comment><USER5> This comes across as really arrogant. And is a big big red flag for me.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it's arrogant, just realistic - if you aren't interested in leaving your current job you probably aren't going to no matter what the company trying to poach you does. So for them bend over backwards to convince you to interview is a waste of time.

<comment><USER7> That's a huge false assumption, of course you might consider leaving if the interview process was less demanding and impractical? It doesn't seem realistic at all. The company is just continuing with their bad interview process with their head in the sand, telling themselves "it's okay, the people who don't like our interview process probably aren't any good or wouldn't move anyway!". I mean how would they know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I took that interview, and got the job, emigrated to the US from the UK and stayed for 4.5 years. I had total belief Firebase was the future and I wanted to be part of it. The challenge was mentally stimulating, harder than most academic planning problems. It was really hard to exploit the structure. I spent the full 9 hours on it after restarting my efforts at the 5 hour mark. 9 hours of sustained effort. Its not the kind of effort I would blow on most interviews, but totally worth it for that opportunity. And indeed, joining Firebase changed my life fundamentally. In retrospect.... it was such a great move, time spent exceedingly well :)

Edit: I wonder how much was luck. I definitely aimed for Firebase. I used it once after seeing on HN and fell in love with it immediately. It felt like the future, so it wasn't dumb luck, but then, it worked out so very well, I wonder if I saw a similar opportunity I would be able to leap at it again. Would it work out again? I guess time will tell.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for sharing. It's great to see how leaping at a seemingly small, fleeting opportunity based on seeing something once on HN had such a great impact on your life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> At a previous company, we too would administer a technical test. Our pass rate was close to what was described in the article (40% for ours vs 25%). However, our test was incredibly simple. At most, it should have take a competent developer two hours to complete [including writing comments and a README].

The assignment was to read a file containing a list of numbers (some formatted incorrectly, so there was some very simple parsing logic involved), call an API using each correctly formatted number as a parameter, and store what the API returned to a file. I am to this day stunned that 60% of people who passed a phone screen could not solve this task. Note that we gave them the input file, so it wasn't a matter of an edge case tripping them up or them getting one input file but the test input file having some other edge case.

My point here is that it may be possible to get the same screening value with much less investment from the candidate.

<comment><USER11> We're the other numbers in your funnel similar as well (phone screen pass, on- site pass, offer accepted)? I ask this because the numbers I saw in the article look remarkably similar to approximate numbers I've seen or been told about other companies.

<comment><USER10> I don't have the stats in front of me, but my recollection is something like (using the same base number for Phone Screen but our rates):

Applications: 5000 candidates; ~20% pass rate (vs unknown)

Phone Screen: 1000 candidates; ~50% pass rate (vs 40%)

Technical Test: 500 candidates; ~40% pass rate (vs 25%)

On-site interview & reference checks: 200 candidates; ~50% pass rate (vs 40%)

Offer: 100 candidates; ~80% hire rate (vs 60%)

Hired: 80

So by some arguments you could say Firebase was 2.5x as selective (40 offers vs 100). With a funnel like this, even small changes to the percentages end up having a larger overall effect.

Unfortunately, we don't have the Applications number from the blog post, though he says "we considered a great deal more applicants than that [1000] on paper." I suppose a "great deal" could be anywhere from double to 10x...

<comment><USER11> What it looks like to me is Firebase put more emphasis on the technical test. If you keep your exact numbers, except change the test pass rate to 25%, then you come out with 62-63 offers, which, by the argument you reference, would mean Firebase was 56% more selective.

That makes sense to me, because a smaller company needs to filter out as many people who couldn't possibly get hired at earlier stages, since the later stages are even more time intensive than code reviewing the technical test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Then, after they submitted their answer, we would provide them with a > thorough and detailed code review (usually by the legendary @mikelehen).

> We treated this code review like a real production code review, and we did > it whether or not we planned to move forward with the candidate.

First, thank you for actually investing time in giving feedback to candidates regardless of their performance. Second, did you tell candidates that they would get detailed feedback or a code review as part of the instructions or phone screen? If yes, I figure that this would greatly affect how willing people were to doing the assignment.

I've always hated the thought of take home assignments because I have never been given detailed feedback and only rarely been given any feedback. Requests for feedback are always ignored regardless of performance. I sense that part of why people have greatly soured on take home assignments is because of how lopsided the time investment has become.

<comment><USER13> If people knew they were going to get a free code review by a notorious developer, they might submit without any intention of taking the job. Having someone who knows there stuff look over your code and give you detailed pointers on what's good and bad, is like finding water in a desert for most devs.

<comment><USER14> Any good resources you can recommend to improve my own code review skills? I'm keen on drilling into the most valuable skills needed in the industry right now. It sounds like good code review is super important but lacking.

<comment><USER15> It's really difficult to actually do a thorough check of logic , exploration of alternate approaches, performance concerns, etc. in all your code reviews, it would be an insane amount of time spent and probably no real return on investment for the company (obviously devs would love to spend a couple hours weighing the merits of different approaches to a problem).

I have a list of checks to run through, some general (Sass variables used, reusable code/components used if possible, variables have meaningful names), others more specific to our codebase conventions. I add to the list as new conventions get prioritized and check it. Code review is more about maintaining codebase consistency than suggesting alternate solutions to problems for me.

<comment><USER16> A rare post in that it's entirely a coin toss whether it's meant to be irony or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've seen a lot of companies that, like firebase, try to assess if a candidate "is excited about our company" early in the process.

It always seems weird to me. I barely know you- why would I be excited? Ask me at the end of the onsite after I've talked to a number of people across a variety of roles, seen your office, heard about the work, explored the culture, etc etc.

During the initial screen, I really only know about your business, which is not the biggest factor for me.

<comment><USER18> The cynical side of me thinks that candidates are screened for this because screening for things like technical ability and communication skills is actually really hard, so we screen for this easy thing instead.

I wonder if "excitedness about the company early in the interview process" is in any way indicative of on the job performance later on.

<comment><USER19> I find it's a lot easier to work for someone if I personally want their product; compared to a product that I have very little interest in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > The strongest candidates take their job search seriously and are willing to > devote a fair amount of time to landing the right job.

... only for the 1-2 top companies they are interviewing for.

I have discontinued multiple interviews because they demanded 4-5 evenings of work for free on short notice, if I am going to spend 10-20 hours per company I have to take two weeks off from my current work to do it. On the other hand I have done the required work if I really want to join a company, but they are only top 5%.

Another problem is, usually what is expected and how the project will be judged is not mentioned beforehand;

\- so do I write unit tests?

\- do you want docs for running it?

\- should it include deployment instructions/code?

\- does have to support 5000 req/s?

\- how important is clean code for this?

each add more time and these kind of question are never ending.

So unless you are Stripe, Airbnb, Netflix, etc. (Very strong Engineering and better than average culture), I will not bother, will say thank you and be on my way.

Finally, let's say you have done the project and they reject you, they never put a fraction of the time you spent to give you feedback. because that means a lot of time they will spend on someone that will not be hired. Also might open the way for litigation for discrimination in some countries etc.

On the other hand; Once I was managing hiring process of a new grad where we asked her to design a FE+BE system, after receiving it I spent a couple of hours reviewing it, we decided to hire her, she was very enthusiastic and smart, I also sent her our notes and how she can improve the project. Her response was along the lines of "even if you don't hire me I am very grateful for doing the project, did learn a lot" She joined and quickly became a very productive colleague.

Edit: I noticed that the author mentions they keep in touch during the project and provide a code review, had not seen that yet while writing the comment. In that case it makes sense, but the candidate should know they will receive feedback even if they fail which I believe is hard for the team to accomplish but kudos if they did manage to do it.

<comment><USER21> As someone who has given take-home tests let me answer these for you:

\- Unit tests? Yes. It will increase your standing.

\- Docs? Absolutely. A must have. You will not be considered really otherwise.

\- Deployment? See above.

\- Support 5k requests? Not unless that is what the test is testing for, pay attention during phone interview about the role and it's requirements, the test will look for this and other generalizations.

\- Clean code? Very, very important. Don't try to show how smart you are, show how audience aware you are. Most likely you will be working on a team, a team doesn't want a cowboy programmer.

Something you didn't mention but bodes really well for anything with a front- end interface: hosting. Executives hate running things themselves, so a hosted version will put you at the top of the list.

<comment><USER22> I like how this is what interviewers are looking for and then you get hired and there are no tests, the code is a mess and the performance sucks.

<comment><USER23> And they ask a hard algorithmic/CS problem then your job is to build CRUD interfaces

<comment><USER22> You nailed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I interviewed with Andrew in Google for an internal team transfer as a Software Engineer. At the end of a very strange non-technical 30-minute interview where he sounded like an important and arrogant upper-management, I asked him what he was looking for and his reply was he wanted to hire someone that he liked and wanted to work with. That's seriously what it boils down to.

I cannot take this article seriously. And "a history of working on challenging projects with real deliverables" sounds ridiculous, when you know they hired people straight from bootcamps as engineers.

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry you feel I was arrogant.

I really do want to hire people "that I like and wanted to work with" though. I would hope most managers do.

FWIW we never technically interviewed internal transfers inside Google (we counted on Google's normal interview process to maintain the bar). We were just looking for team fit in those discussions.

I'm disappointed you would belittle bootcamp graduates. Many of them are awesome, and we were lucky enough to hire one amazing one. And yes he did have a "history of working on challenging problems with real deliverables", just not the CS kind in this case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article is worth reading just for the description about the take-home coding challenge.

I agree that 4 hours is a good target, and that the coding challenge must be fun and in an language of the candidate's choice.

> One common objection I've heard to take-home tests is that they are too time > consuming, and candidates won't be willing to do them.

As a candidate, I encountered this situation twice, but it was because the coding challenge was poorly designed.

In one case, the coding challenge basically required me to learn two major Java frameworks. As I had minimal Java experience and never touched the frameworks, I estimated that it would take me 2-3 days just to understand what someone else could probably do in 2-3 hours. I have no desire to be a framework jock, so I walked away.

Another time, I did a challenge for an open-source company. They had a list of some bugs, and I picked what I thought was easiest. The language wasn't one that I did any work in. No one responded to my questions, so again, I walked away.

</comment><comment><USER25> I feel so fortunate that I have never been desperate enough to even entertain the idea of working for 8+ hours, for free, as part of an interview process.

Yikes.

<comment><USER26> I keep reading that there's a huge shortage of competent software developers. Then I keep reading that employers are kicking applicants in the teeth over and over as many times as they can get away with. Something about this doesn't quite fit.

<comment><USER27> The other thing that is often odd is they place an ad for a position and list very specific domain knowledge and they say 'before we will consider you, you need do this arbitrary four hour on line coding test'. Here in Sydney we have a couple of trading firms complaining they can't get staff. I often think now, being able to confidently do the job needed very well, is not a primary requirement. When I say well, I mean, well coded, well documented, good design, not just able to solve the algorithm at hand. Are we short of good programmers or do we have to many?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "As a startup, process speed and transparency are your secret weapons when competing for candidates with large companies."

Amen. I've known people who got through Google's interview process, but even then the response is "Great job, we'll let you know within a few months if there's an opening on a team you can join."

Not a great response when you're graduating soon and you've got concrete offers from other companies that will expire.

</comment><comment><USER29> >The whole test was designed to take 6 hours.

Pre-Screening to get to an onsite interview taking 6 hours? I'm sorry, but this is the exact toxic interview culture that is poisoning the job hiring process in tech startups.

>Some of our employees enjoyed the test so much, in fact, that they continued working on their solutions after they were hired

Jee, I wonder if that had anything to do with the fact that they were, you know, new employees? As in, trying to put their best side forward and make a great impression? Did it even occur to you that you are inadvertently increasing their workload with your downright torturous screening process?

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm currently on the job market, and have done a few of these types of take- home tests over the last two months. If they're well structured, as it appears here, they can be fun and hopefully build enthusiasm about the company. If they're not, it's a huge red flag. A company that doesn't value my time as a candidate is unlikely to do so as an employee, and isn't one I want to work with.

If you do this, make sure to treat candidates with respect and humanity. Give them some feedback at the end of the process, so they know their efforts aren't wasted.

</comment><comment><USER31> 2 issues i have with this "process":

1 - take-home task of "only" 6 hours. that's on top of the onsite (~6 hours) and a few hours for phone call and followups. that's too much for an unpaid job.

2 - they try to find people they know to sniff around about the candidate. that's usually bad as you can jeopardize the candidate's current job (usually people interview while still working at another place). overall this post made me want to work at firebase even less now.

</comment><comment><USER32> Take home tests are fine by me, but before you ask me to do that you better have sold me on the job first. If I really want the job, no problem. I expect, however, that spending 6 hours of my weekend on unpaid labor translates into a shorter on-site if you like the quality of my work. The goal of the on-site should be to verify that I was actually the person who did the work for the take-home.

Things are a bit different when I'm some schmuck off the street begging for work. If you're trying to build a team and you want my skills, well, in this market I'm not putting a lot of energy into it.

Case in point, I've had a company trying to hire me for over a year now. They're in consumer electronics and it is a fickle market so I kept turning them down, but I had a bad week at work and figured I'd go for it. I'd be an absolute perfect fit given my experience and what they're looking for, so it seemed like things were going to work out great.

I accept an on-site, do well on a whiteboard coding test and a general review of my resume, and then one of their senior folks throws me an off-the-wall algorithm question(random sample a stream of data with uniform probability). Now, I'm an embedded guy, with an EE degree, and I specialize in "software engineering". They have many problems I'm perfectly suited to solving. They really, really need a guy like me(to design and fix drivers, abstraction layers, facilitate porting to new devices and enable third party clients). But here's this guy, asking me an algorithm question, and he didn't even explain it right. I googled the answer(reservoir sampling) when I was finished and understood the solution in a couple minutes, but it was too late. I was flagged for 2 more algorithm-heavy, 'cracking the coding' interviews the following Monday. I really didn't feel like spending my weekend reviewing bullshit I never use in my job, so I turned down the offer. It's too bad, I was a good fit for the team, and I was a great fit for the problems they were trying to solve.

</comment><comment><USER33> A "take home test" of 6 hours is a waste of my time.

I'd rather spend those hours on a personal project which I can use for demonstrating to potential employers or perhaps use for a side-income.

</comment><comment><USER34> Not a place I'd want to work, I think. Two red flags are:

1\. They signal from the first point that all your time belongs to the company. Taking a test of 6 hours is not something I'd have time for.

2\. Their company value "Give 110%, 33% of the Time" creeps me out. If someone is not satisfied when you give 100%, _run away_.

</comment><comment><USER35> Candidates can cheat take-home exams by asking someone else to complete the assignment. After the assignment, you have to ask detailed questions about the code, solution approach and trade-offs.

If what you have to offer is above average (compensation, growth opportunities, reputation, culture) people will be willing to make an extra effort. If you are offering the same as everyone else, candidates will deprioritize your interviews.

</comment><comment><USER36> "we had a small team of just 24 exceptional people that I firmly believe was among the strongest of its kind in the world"

I am absolutely sure that this is something A LOT of companies say and think about their current setup. Impossible to verify, just something that sounds great and makes the 24-people group feel special.

</comment><comment><USER37> (rant)

Startup idea: take away home assignments for a fee. You send us your code assignment we make it for you. We also provide you with code highlights so you can understand the code and architecture faster and have something to talk about on the onsite.

Most of the work is not done by us but by "volunteers" .

Who are these "volunteers" ?

Desperate engineers looking for a role, who are thinking that our fake company is really wanting to hire them.

We also get in touch with hiring managers and convince them to send take away assignments in order to increase our market.

(/rant)

I don't like code assignments because they can easily be abused by both companies and candidates and regardless of my opinion on it I think Firebase is awesome. I was an early adopter before you got adquired by Google.

</comment><comment><USER38> This overlaps a bit with RFP processes.

If you get a request for a proposal where the potential customer / hiring committee clearly just copy/pasted a set of items that don't even fit their company type or area, or that ask for unreasonable stuff from the start, then you will save yourself a TON of time by saying thanks but no thanks.

If someone has an interesting set of question or a clean and focused RFP, fantastic. GO for it, you will enjoy working with them.

Another item - if your customer will need to do some type of work, have a TINY bit of that in your engagement process. Ie, let's say client will need to write a lot of text, have them briefly respond to a question in the process. If they will need to fill out worksheets, have them do a tiny one.

Another one - if they won't tell you what they need or who they are - <USER2> worth it.

</comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if the OP can comment on whether GoldMine ended up biasing their decision to hire in an unintended way. In hiring security researchers, we have been finding that a lengthy technical exercise is terrific to properly gauge applicant skills, but that the scores of the test could end up weighing heavily on the decision to hire or not, potentially at the expense of unrealized potential. In other words, the candidate may have technical strengths not captured. I am assuming the approach only works to the extent that the test is a model of the actual problems the company is trying to solve. And yet they are looking for generalists. Somehow the test seems insufficient.

</comment><comment><USER40> Really appreciate all the skills and positive attitude they were looking for and I think every engineer should strive to live up to their standards up until this part:

        …is excited about our company.

Excitement should be deserved, which means it is a feeling which is acquired _after_ working together for some time. It should not be required as the default position in a job interview. To build a great product, you need seasoned professionals, not gullible hipsters.

</comment><comment><USER41> I checked out the Gold Mine problem on geeksforgeeks (assuming it is the same problem at firebase). Can you explain why it is "potentially impossible" to get the optimal solution?

<comment><USER4> That's a different problem than the one we used. We added some additional complexity that required a search of the entire solution space to get a provably optimal answer, and then we made the maps & allowed # of moves large enough that brute force was impossible. So people had to build sub-optimal search solutions that pruned in intelligent ways.

<comment><USER42> Is the problem (statement, input and hopefully leaderboard) available online somewhere?

I figure it hasn't been used for recruiting in a long time, so there shouldn't be any downside of that nature to it being so. But there is the invested time in making it available, of course.

I hardly think I would be the only one thriled to try it just for fun. It would probably provide a great deal of goodwill for you guys, as well as further the industry's understanding of what constitutes a good take-home problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > One of my favorite interview questions (created by Vikrum) was: "What > happens after you type '[https://www.google.xn--com- > to0a](https://www.google.com') into a browser and hit enter?"

Wow, I had no idea who came up with that question first. (see, e.g., [https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when](https://github.com/alex/what- happens-when) ).

When was the first time it was asked? Where?

</comment><comment><USER44> Could you elaborate on how you know "the amount of time a candidate took [on Goldmine] turned out to be a pretty strong signal."?

</comment><comment><USER45> This is probably survivorship bias at work. A lot of startups have strong sense of self worth because they believe they are hiring/have the best candidates with their process. Let's be realistic, you can probably build a really good team out of just about any sampling of 1000 applicants with just a regular couple-hour interview process.

</comment><comment><USER46> In a tight labor tech market , unnecessary friction in hiring will be detrimental until you build a brand (your company is hockey sticking or the day to day work has wide appeal to devs) or find the "true believers". In a downturn , go crazy , set up your gauntlet , and you will find the best that your network or advertising can produce.

</comment><comment><USER47> > If the candidate is traveling for the interview, your company should pay for > all travel expenses and make sure they have a reasonable schedule and are > able to get a full night's sleep the night before.

We're lucky to have this in the software industry as standard practice. Has anyone had horror stories otherwise?

</comment><comment><USER48> >The strongest candidates take their job search seriously and are willing to devote a fair amount of time to landing the right job.

Yeah, maybe if they're interviewing to work for Facebook, Google, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft or other big-ticket dream companies a lot of developers want to work for. But, Andrew was talking about hiring for an early-stage startup, before Google even acquired them.

As a startup, you're asking others to take a risk by working for you. Some engineers have families, debts and commitments to worry about. Working for an early-stage startup that might run out of money or collapse is a very real and likely risk.

It's hard to argue that Firebase was not a roaring success for Andrew and others. But, expecting a candidate to do a six-hour test for a startup that statistically might not have succeeded, and furthermore, listing out the benefits of a take-home test being less stressful and then proceeding to describe what sounds like micromanagement under the guise of helping (by calling candidates at the start and during of the technical test).

And we keep hearing there is a talented engineer shortage. Maybe the problem isn't a shortage, it's companies expecting engineers to be put through arduous and time-consuming interview processes like they're trying to get a job at NASA building human-payload rockets. For every company wanting to take hours and days of your time, there is another company that won't put you through a BS hiring process and make it faster.

I work for a smaller company, I had two interviews for a front-end engineering position. I came in, met with the engineering lead and another senior. They didn't make me do a technical test, they opened up my GitHub profile on a large monitor, handed me a keyboard and mouse and asked me to pick one of my repositories and run them through my code and decisions that I had made. I chose a Javascript library I had built, they asked me things about the architecture, if I had tests, my thoughts on Webpack and other bundlers. It was all related to the library and all answers I could easily provide because I built it. No BS, just a pressure-free interview.

The second and final interview was a coffee with the general manager and the engineering lead. They gave me more detail about why they're looking for someone, explained it was a new position and where they saw me fitting. I ended up having lunch with them and a couple of other team members who joined. It was all casual and pressure free.

This company offered me $50k more than I was currently earning. It was a MASSIVE pay bump for me, and I didn't have to sacrifice hours of my family time just to be told I didn't pass or get the job. It's also a completely remote position, no commute whatsoever. No wonder this company has been around thirty years and many of the original hires are still here.

</comment><comment><USER49> Smart, compliant, friendly and enthuastic. No problem domain, life or business experience required.

Sounds neat until one realizes you can be replaced in an instant by one of the ever growing number of new "graduates" every year.

</comment><comment><USER50> While it's certainly convenient to give everyone the same question, you'll find that questions asked by even smaller companies get posted online these days. You then give everyone willing to cheat an edge.

</comment><comment><USER4> [author here]

Hi all - I hope you find this useful!

If you have questions or want to know more I'm hosting a live stream Q&A today on Twitter at 1 PM Pacific. Tune in and bring your interviewing and hiring questions! I'm @startupandrew on Twitter.

<comment><USER51> Your claim that a take-home test is "lower stress" is undercut by the fact that you time your interviewees on their homework. Why do you think it is important to gauge how fast a person might be able to solve your toy problem, and why do you expect your candidates to dedicate 6-12 hours (unpaid) of continuous time to your company before you've even met them in person in most cases? Did you consider that this might inherently discriminate against those with significant time constraints in addition to their current job, biasing your results to new grads and people without hobbies and/or families?

<comment><USER52> How does an employeee having hobbies and a family help with the survival of the company? It seems that hiring people with a life outside of work could be in the active disinterest of squeezing the most work for the least pay out of the human resources that corporations feed on.

<comment><USER53> So true. If you can't code for 6 hours straight without ignoring the fact that a job change can have an incredible impact on all your life goals and personal relationships, why are you even a coder bro?

This process is so weak, when I heard about it in 2013 I was like...why would I ever want to work at firebase?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> what kind of dev responds to the "what happens when you type google.com into the browser" question with "Well, most laptops have mechanical butterfly mechanism in their keyboards…"??

<comment><USER55> Right? Most browsers these days are run on mobile devices with capacitative touchscreens for input.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Models for Collaborative Websites? - <AUTHOR> I am playing with the idea of creating a niche information website, where I want users to be able to contribute and improve the content.
I am looking at the Wikipedia and StackOverflow models to get inspiration on how to foster quality contributions. Is there any other good example of a website where good quality content emerges from user contributions?
Using a pure Wiki or Stack-exchange model is not an option, because:
- I want to be able to impose a schema for the different items that can be documented, to improve searchability, so a wiki is a bit too unstructured, but
- the general structure should be closer to an encyclopedia than a Q&A
The aim is to provide a collection of quality information, which is missing in that niche, not to make money, in case that matters. <comment><USER2> The structure of your website's data is less important than its moderation process. High quality online communities tend to have strong, well-defined moderation policies – Wikipedia and Stack Overflow are good examples, as are HN and certain subreddits (eg AskHistorians).

Regardless of the technology behind a website, online communities without strong moderation tend to die over time as low quality content crowds out everything else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the remark. That is indeed also what I am looking at, or more precisely the interaction between structure and moderation policy. Stackoverflow is a very good example of how they interact. At such an early stage, I am mostly trying to identify structures on which policies can be built, as policies are much easier to change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _I want to be able to impose a schema_

The alternative is document search. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_retrieval](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_retrieval) It's how Wikipedia, StackOverflow (and Google) provide reasonable search capabilities. Requiring normalized data is likely to reduce user participation. Good luck.</comment>


Proving Quantum Computers Feasible - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/proving-quantum-computers-feasible

<comment><USER2> My impression was that quantum computers were already proof-of-concept, and are now in the technical challenge stage.</comment>


Sell HN: Do you have a side project you want to sell? (#2, July Edition) - <AUTHOR>

I loved the old Sell HN thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5803374<p>Are there any new/other projects up for sale? Also feel free to post updates on projects you've posted in the previous thread. <comment><USER2> I built [http://bidwars.net](http://bidwars.net) (try [http://pittmaplemiss.bidwars.net/](http://pittmaplemiss.bidwars.net/) for an active group). It's currently for sale on Flippa and the auction has more details: [https://flippa.com/2944217-craigslist-competitor- with-14-700...](https://flippa.com/2944217-craigslist-competitor- with-14-700-uniques-mo-making-500-mo)

Summary: It's the love child of eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook. 7,200 users since January 2013. Currently making around $550/m in AdSense revenue. Growth has stabilized. Roughly 20,000 pageviews a day from 3k visitors.

Stack: LAMP + CodeIgniter, Saas, Coffeescript and jQuery.

skype: gr33nw00d, email: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER3> I'm curious is it normal for people to sell for 2x yearly revenue?

<comment><USER4> Buy it now price are normally always too high that no one goes for them.

Bid price normally goes for around 1 to 1.5 x yearly profit on Flippa, unless it's a really unique and valuable site.

<comment><USER5> The minimum bid is 10k and the yearly revenue is 6k, though; the buy it now is 50k.

<comment><USER6> 2x yearly is standard now for a business with at least 2 years proven history on sales and traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I own [http://ltdex.com](http://ltdex.com) and would like to sell it, you would get the IP to the designs (plus about 10 others, that are not listed on the website, due to being sold out), the domain, the wordpress ecomm site, 50 printed shirts, and another 100 blank shirts (all american apparel). This would be perfect for someone looking to hone social media/PR skills, as you'd be able to do some decent analytics. The site generates 1-300$/mo in revenue, and I could provide contacts at fab.com (we had a sale last summer on fab). just email me firstname.lastname@example.com, Im looking for something in the 4 figures. I am launching makerops and have a 9-5, so I don't have time to put into it.

</comment><comment><USER8> My other account seems to be blocked, so using this throwaway account.

I'm selling [http://diglig.com](http://diglig.com). Diglig is a context aware task management application which consolidates all of users events from calendars, emails and social networks at one centralized location and then it makes smart recommendations on how to complete their tasks.

Our efforts were recognized by one of the YCombinators competitor and we were offered $40k of seed money. However, due to circumstances at that time we were unable to take the offer. Since then my partner moved out of state due to job change and I had a kid, so no more time to work on it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have [http://www.autotweeter.in](http://www.autotweeter.in) to sell , its a shareware autotweeting desktop application which tweets from a preset excel sheet.Have made sales over two years.Its paying my rent & other monthly expenses.approx sales of 300$/month.Also ranks in first page of google for autotweeter related keywords.Can sell more if you advertise the product and make video demos.I can give you paypal reports if you contact me at email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER10> We built [http://www.ukscrap.com](http://www.ukscrap.com) which was geared towards people sending leads for these cars automatically to agents around the country who would contact the seller. We were doing around $2-$3,000 a month a couple of years ago but have focused on other things and have let this go. It would be ideal for someone who has the time to run something like this as it will take time and human interaction with the agents

<comment><USER11> Do you pay for the scrap cars? I didn't see that on there. Just curious...

<comment><USER10> Sorry, should have given a bit of the model. No - basically we pass leads to people and then when they pick a car up they send us money. There's an element of 'honour' system here but it could be tightened up if necessary

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We built [https://kishkee.com](https://kishkee.com) a while ago. We never did any advertising for it but it still has bunch of paying, very active users but we really don't have the time to work on it. Would love for it to go to a good home.</comment>


Google Ventures, ready to roll?  - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2009/03/20/google-ventures-ready-to-roll/ <comment><USER2> I know other tech companies have venture arms, but I'm curious to know if being a G-backed startup would affect your exit strategy options (either pos. or neg.)

For example, what if MS was interested in acquiring a company that Google funded? Could they block it? Would it affect the price?

Or would G only fund startups that are outside their core competency or that they plan on acquiring later?</comment>


I Finally Deleted my LinkedIn Account - <AUTHOR> http://thomashunter.name/blog/i-finally-deleted-my-linkedin-account/ <comment><USER2> I'm a recruiter and I simply do not understand things like this. Sure, many of my colleagues have given us a reputation for being incompetent assholes. But many of my friends contact me the second they are looking for a new job because they know I like to help people out. Isn't pressing archive on a couple annoying emails worth meeting someone like that?

When the market isn't so good, maybe people will stop thinking of these people as annoyances (though I understand 95% of them ARE worthless annoyances) and realize that these people can be a valuable tool to help them get a job. Hell, I don't charge for a single placement I make where it is a friend being placed. If a friend says "hey do you know a recruiter/hiring manager at place x? I'd like to work there." My answer is usually "yes" and they do. Call the people in the field annoying all you want, but I imagine someday people will realize they were being a bit immature with stuff like this. It's almost as if people need to pad their ego by bragging about how many of these annoying emails they get and then start doing things like writing blogs about how theyre deleting a useful tool because of it. Makes no sense to me.

<comment><USER3> This whole thing reminds me of the H-1B debate in a way. What we have here is a heavily bimodal system that is also poorly understood. There are _amazing_ recruiters (I've the pleasure of knowing a few), and then there are _awful_ recruiters. There doesn't seem to be a lot of middle ground - you're either in the "awesome, great to work with" camp, or you're in the "omfg leave me alone" camp.

What you have here are people treating recruiters as a monolithic entity instead of the highly binary one that it actually is.

Knowing some good recruiters is _extremely_ valuable. I agree that sometimes these "hurr recruiterzzz" posts seem like attention-seeking or bragging. I ignore almost all recruiter contacts on LinkedIn, and they waste 10-20 seconds of my life daily. Hardly something worth a blog post about.

Anyways, something concrete from the post that bothered me:

> _"For now on, if I like a company, I'll contact them."_

And you can do this while still talking to recruiters. I contact companies occasionally just to chat, even if I'm not looking for work, simply because I find their work interesting and want to make the introduction. I also talk to recruiters, because I am not an encyclopedic source for good companies in my area.

The secret is talking to good recruiters and wasting no time with bad ones.

<comment><USER2> I guess the problem I have is that people seem entirely unable to do anything but "well all recruiters suck" nowadays, when that is very, very clearly not the case. Of course a lot of recruiters suck and are annoying, but when you translate that into "all recruiters suck, fuck them, I'm not talking to them", frankly you're hurting yourself.

In the last 3 weeks I've had a couple different CTOs ask me to meet so I can teach them a bit more about hiring. I'm not harassing these people into taking a meeting. They are emailing me because they know that I can teach them skills that would help them and their company grow. If people want to shut out a source of value like this, than that is their own choice, but it's certainly not one I agree with.

<comment><USER4> _Of course a lot of recruiters suck and are annoying, but when you translate that into "all recruiters suck, fuck them, I'm not talking to them", frankly you're hurting yourself._

If and only if the benefit you receive from the good recruiters outweighs the hassle of talking to and vetting all the bad recruiters in order to find the good ones.

This isn't always the case. I get that you're frustrated by the demonization of your industry, but I suspect you don't really appreciate just how much of a useless time-suck a bad recruiter can be, and just how small the ratio of good to bad recruiters is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems like a silly post designed purely to preach to the "recruiters? Ha!" choir.

There's literally zero downside to having a LinkedIn account. The emails are too annoying? Auto-archive them and send them to a 'Recruiting Spam' folder which you browse every few weeks (or never).

<comment><USER6> Privacy concerns? Another company having a bunch of data on you including where you're from, where you went to school, and where you've worked?

Disclaimer: I have a LinkedIn account, but I'm likely deleting it soon.

<comment><USER7> All information you've _explicitly_ disclosed to them yourself.

If you'd complained about how much stuff companies like this _infer_ about you then you'd have more of a case about privacy. e.g I've never given Facebook my phone number but I'm almost certain that FB already knows what it is since my friends have it in their address books. Address books which they've (perhaps unwittingly) handed over to countless companies. Even then, me leaving such services doesn't stop them from knowing things about me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I owe my livelihood to both LinkedIn and my personal blog. Without either, I wouldn't have the great job I have at the moment; 100% remote work.

I think deleting your LinkedIn account is a net loss, what's the downside of _having_ a LinkedIn account?

<comment><USER9> Well, remote job isn't exclusively connected to linkedin and personally i think that remote jobs are going to become more and more common with time. Linkedin is, mostly, useful for headhunters and people who want to sell themselves (which is totally legal, but it's personal choice). I've deleted my linkedin account and doing just fine with one important addition -> don't have to pump my ego on profile and live all that shit related to virtual narcissism. So, if you ask me, it's much better in mental sense.

<comment><USER8> I don't know what you mean by 'better in a mental sense'. I have my LinkedIn account and log in at best every 2 months. I don't even realize when I have internal linkedin notifications. People contact me by email, not by linkedin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish more recruiters actually used LinkedIn.

I moved from NY almost two years ago, and I still get calls/emails for NY based positions. A quick glance at my LinkedIn profile will clearly show that I do not live in NY anymore.

There is no magic behind LinkedIn. You are discoverable based on the amount of information you enter. Do not list skills or job descriptions (w/ buzzwords) and your hit rate will go down. Forget what LinkedIn suggests, your profile does not need to be 100% completed.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've never treated LinkedIn as anything but the modern corollary to a Rolodex. I happily deleted my Facebook account a couple years ago, but, at least once a month (if not more often) make good use of linked-in to track down the email address of a past coworker and/or see what they are up to these days.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not on LinkedIn because of the recruiting. Most of the recruiting messages I've received have been either friendly (I tell them "No thanks, let's talk in a year or so") or so ham-handed and over the top that I've passed the howlers around.

(The only time in 35 years that I found a job through a recruiter, it was a train wreck. I doubt the recruiters on LinkedIn are much different).

I'm on LinkedIn because it's fun to find and talk to prior cow-orkers without involving the privacy catastrophe that is Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't have a LinkedIn account because I don't think that any social network's management can be trusted over the mid to long term on matters relating to privacy, etc. LinkedIn is better than others so far, but the incentives do not align.

Yet I still get a not insignificant amount of spam connection requests.

<comment><USER14> Then don't give LinkedIn any information that you wouldn't want becoming public? The tool is just as useful with just your résumé transcribed into their system as it is with that plus a bunch of your secrets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The "I tried to call you" e-mail brings me to my tangential pet peeve: _why can't more recruiters do more of their business by e-mail?_

Seriously, if you want to chat with me on a matter that I'm going to need discretion in (like, say, leaving the company that owns the cubicles) we're going to have to arrange a time in advance.

That's a lot of effort to find out that my skills are a poor match for the position, or (as happens a lot) that I've already been talking to your client.

</comment><comment><USER16> Funny. I simply put "I'm not interested in recruiters or open positions at this time. I will mark them as spam." at the top of my profile. The spam connection request have stopped completely.

I used to have this in my 'how to contact me" spot in the profile, but LinkedIn failed to surface that section correctly in the public profile. Half of this is their fault.

<comment><USER17> I have a similar blurb in my profile, although I don't go as far as saying "I'll mark them as spam". But I have a very explicit section, labeled " __ _NOTE TO RECRUITERS_ __I am NOT interested in ..." in there.

With that, I do still get a few recruiter contacts every now and then, but it's just a trickle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> You will find you still get LinkedIn invites from recruiters. And LinkedIn will send you a "reminder" email about the invitation every couple of weeks. Still don't understand why LinkedIn feels it needs to be so slimy.

</comment><comment><USER19> My presence on LinkedIn got me my last two jobs, and LinkedIn wasn't a thing when I started my first. This last job was through one of these cold-emails through a recruiter. As it has been said by other commenters, it's really what you make of it. I treat LinkedIn as a professional version of Facebook that I actually take care to prune, which really just makes it a glorified Rolodex.

It's also worth noting that you don't even have to be notified of all these bothersome emails, let alone reply to them, and can clearly indicate whether or not you wish to be contacted about work (granted, that can be ignored, but the good ones won't).

</comment><comment><USER20> In an ideal world when it comes time to look for a new role you'd browse all the companies with positions open. It's frustrating though, that many, many companies don't advertise the positions because the effort of sorting through thousands of replies is too much, so they outsource that by going through a recruiter.

The recruiters though are typically inexperienced due to high churn rate, so it's almost random luck that you'd get a good fit for a job interview, particularly if they lie to both you and the employer before the interview to make it seem like there's a fit.

It's definitely inefficient, what's the solution here?

<comment><USER21> Networking. Funny enough, LinkedIn is a pretty decent tool for that. I got my current job by contacting a friend here and I would not know I have a contact here without having found that via LI.

It's a self-updating rolodex for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I deleted my LinkedIn account and I _still_ get emails from them. LinkedIn, I beg of you, please leave me alone.

</comment><comment><USER23> I honestly don't get spammed by these recruiters. What's the difference between my account and all these other people who are getting "spammed"?

<comment><AUTHOR> We probably throw way too many acronyms in there that don't need to be mentioned (e.g. HTML and CSS).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> We have a stupid amount in common, sent you an email with a question about something. I promise I'm not a recruiter.

</comment><comment><USER25> +1 sir. Good devs need no stinking LinkedIn.

Good recruitments happen through good contacts anyway.

</comment><comment><USER26> Curious: what sites are alternatives to LinkedIn? Who is LinkedIn's competition?

<comment><USER27> There's xing.com (formerly OpenBC), which is very popular in Germany.</comment></comment>


Vermont's DMV has been selling personal data to private companies since 2004 - <AUTHOR> https://vtdigger.org/2019/11/25/how-vermonts-dmv-makes-millions-selling-personal-information/ <comment><USER2> Florida made $77 million in 2017 alone in selling its DMV data to bill collectors, data brokers, marketing firms, and insurance companies.

[https://www.fastcompany.com/90376510/floridas-dmv-is- selling...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90376510/floridas-dmv-is-selling- drivers-personal-information-to-bill-collectors-and-data-brokers)

<comment><USER3> They hardly made any money. That's only 4 dollars per resident. That's ridiculous. I'd rather they just tax me another 10 dollars than give away my information without consent.

<comment><USER4> Not all residents drive.

But in any case, I doubt many people would think $4/yr for info that's probably already available.

<comment><USER5> Nitpick: the comparison should be to the number of residents that get an official state ID through the DMV, not drivers, and the former is a lot closer to the total >15-year-old population than drivers would be.

(At least, if Florida is like a typical state DMV, which issues the state ID cards that may or may not have a driving endorsement.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There was a follow up by the VT Governor on this. He instructed the DMV to stop the practice for at least private investigators.

Federal law requires some of this information be for sale to insurance companies, trucking companies, others.

[https://vtdigger.org/2019/12/06/scott-tells-dmv-to-stop- givi...](https://vtdigger.org/2019/12/06/scott-tells-dmv-to-stop-giving- private-investigators-personal-data/)

<comment><USER7> > Federal law requires some of this information be for sale to insurance > companies, trucking companies, others.

man, that is incredibly f*cked.

<comment><USER8> I don't know how the laws are structured but there is a legitimate need for information to flow both ways between automotive insurance providers and State DMVs.

In many States, like GA, Insurers must report vehicle coverage changes to the State. If you get pulled over, Police Officers do not need to ask for insurance cards and can cite you for lapsed coverage.

At the same time, insurers want to know for liability purposes all drivers list at policy residences and when a driver's license is suspended.

Perhaps that information should be free with stipulations on how it can be used.

<comment><USER9> > _At the same time, insurers want to know for liability purposes all drivers > list at policy residences and when a driver 's license is suspended._

What they want is irrelevant, and what they need is not-this. They'll find out someone's license is suspended when a coverage event happens, and that's it. Similarly, the police will know your license is suspended before insurance is in question.

There's simply no need to be proactive about getting that information because there's no risk to them for not knowing. Same with addresses and pretty much everything else not on an application for insurance at the outset.

I simply don't see how "liability purposes" fits.

<comment><USER8> There are numerous ways it can play out depending on the way each state structures their liability laws but imagine your child turns 16, you forget or "forget" to add them to your policy, and they are involved in a serious accident.

In some states the insurance company is on the hook because everyone at a residence is covered under the policy unless listed as excluded. The insurance company has no way to collect on any premium uprate that might have occurred had you listed them on the policy. And they might have recourse to come after you. And they could cancel your policy.

In other states the insurance company could retroactively cancel your policy for failure to list a driver leaving you with the liability from the accident.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps it's time for a federal privacy law if even local governments want in on the analytics action.

<comment><USER11> Devil's advocate, why not let Vermonters vote in their own privacy law for their own government?

<comment><USER4> At the risk of getting too political on HN, the knee-jerk reaction to national (sometimes even international) solutions for every problem is tiresome and unwise.

Some problems necessitate that, but most do not, this being one of them.

I can't find the source, but I read a strong argument about the difficult of moving between nations, states, and municipalities, and the conclusion was that the more localized the legislation, the greater freedom people have. "Vote with your feet"-type deal.

<comment><USER12> The only time I have ever heard of people moving somewhere because of laws is rich people moving to save on taxes. I have not personally known a single person who has actually voted with their feet on issues like this. Maybe I'm an outlier on that, but anecdotally it just doesn't seem like a real thing in practice despite it being a common theory. I would guess that is especially true on something like privacy which is likely very few peoples top priorities when choosing a place to live.

<comment><USER4> _Many people_ move because of taxes, government programs, cost of living, education, social norms, housing, transportation, job opportunities, etc.

All of these are directly or indirectly influenced by policy.

\---

Would you move purely because of a DMV privacy policy? No, probably not. But the basic principal of being able to choose your government by your location is sound.

At the extreme local level, consider HOAs. Their presence certainly influences people's choice to live there.

<comment><USER12> Almost all the things you listed that in my experience actually motivate people are indirectly influenced by policy. The things that are directly influenced by government action like government programs rarely seem to have an impact (taxes can be an exception like previously mentioned).

>Would you move purely because of a DMV privacy policy? No, probably not. But the basic principal of being able to choose your government by your location is sound.

But doesn't that last sentence invalidate the first? If no one actually moves based off privacy law, the idea of allowing people to choose their own privacy law through voting with their feet is pointless in practice.

I don't think HOAs are a good comparison because it is trivially easy to move a couple blocks within a city in comparison to moving to a different state or country. Also a lot of problems within HOAs stem from interpersonal conflicts and not fundamental differences in political ideology.

<comment><USER4> > it is trivially easy to move a couple blocks within a city in comparison to > moving to a different state or country

Exactly. Extreme example of how the more localized we can keep politics, the better people can choose their government.

> If no one actually moves based off privacy law

A. Just like employment, there is a totality of factors to consider.

B. That should tell you how important it is.

> Also a lot of problems within HOAs stem from interpersonal conflicts

Have you ever seen state or national news?

\---

I'm suggesting that as a rule, it's best to localize policy when possible.

Even if you disagree with the principal of "vote with your feet", there is still the point of how unnecessary it is to have 300 million people reach a consensus on DMV operation, when all you really need is the couple million it actually affects.

<comment><USER12> >Exactly. Extreme example of how the more localized we can keep politics, the better people can choose their government.

Using this logic, why doesn't every block in the US have their own local government? The reason is that these things don't scale linearly and that some decisions need to be made on a large scale in order to be practical. You can't have individual blocks creating their own privacy legislation and expect companies to be able to meet every law in every jurisdiction. There is a reason you have probably gotten dozen of "We have updated our privacy policy" emails over the last two months and that is because of the CCPA. Are we supposed to go through that process every time any individual municipality adjust their laws? Coming to a consensus on a singular approach to something like that is much more efficient even if large groups of people are unhappy with the final law.

<comment><USER4> I never claimed that every problem is best solved at the neighborhood block level.

I think Vermont DMV is best solved at the Vermont level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how many DMVs do this. I bet its way more than people think.

I went to a tire retailer website and they were able to look up make/model car by having me put in my license plate number. I thought that was pretty creepy - if that have that, what else do they have?

<comment><USER14> Probably more than you think.

There are private networks selling near real time location data from LPRs. There are probably physical retailers that can map you from the cash register to your vehicle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you're in Washington State, chat up the DoL clerk the next time you renew your tabs. They're not a government office, and they've been legislated to only make a couple bucks off of each tab or plate.

If memory serves they make more money off the convenience fee for paying with a credit card than they do off of the licensing.

They basically don't have a way to turn a net profit. This is exactly the sort of situation that would make someone sell customer data.

<comment><USER16> I think the situation that makes the DMV sell their customer data is privatization of the DMV. Why should the DMV have to turn a profit? If they weren't at some point turned into a profit seeking entity, there would be no motivation to make money off their customers personal info.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wonder what other states have done privatization... I know I was reading in Texas, driving schools are allowed to give you your driving exam, so you can do the written test online and the driven test with the same driving school you bought your lessons from. I thought that was kinda cool and unique. So be useful if you are an adult who never got their license but don't really have any family or friends to let you use their car for a test. I know someone who refuses to let their adult child have a driver license as long as they still live at home because they fear a rise in insurance rates due to their age. I think i'd be cool if high school had driver ed again like in the old days.

<comment><USER17> > I know someone who refuses to let their adult child have a driver license as > long as they still live at home because they fear a rise in insurance rates > due to their age.

That was my situation. I didn't get a license until I was 22, a month or so before I moved out (and the move was planned when I did).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > DMV officials say the vast majority of the revenue comes from insurance > companies and businesses who buy information about their employees' driving > histories.

> However, the department has also allowed law firms, private investigators > and out-of-state corporations to buy or access personal information about > Vermont drivers, including where they live, the cars they drive, their > driving records and their criminal histories.

None of that strikes me as improper, with the exception of maybe out-of-state corporations, and in that case, it would depend on what the corporation was and what they intended to use the data for. Whether the data remains in possession of the corp after its original intended use (and for how long) and whether it is kept only for the original stated use or made available to other portions of the corp for other purposes would play into whether I considered that in improper or not.

IOW, the case of selling data to corporations is gonna be a case-by-case "it depends".

As for insurance companies and private investigators, I think it is right and proper that such entities can look up things like address, criminal history, or vehicles owned. While it seems that every entity gathering up any and all possible data about people will claim that all of the data gathered serves a legitimate business need, in the case of entities like insurance companies or investigators, I think that claim is more likely to be true than not.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am surprised that VTdigger would report this, since they typically side with the state instead of the individual, and aggressively solicit donations from unions & corporations that profit from the corrupt status quo in Vermont. The executive director is a corporate fascist who worships the state and censors like crazy: the board routinely breaks their own posting rules to permit or remove comments in accordance with their political agendas. Pointless whining is always welcome, but hard facts and practical solutions are prohibited. Here's an example of censored comments from the current article:

> "We don't just let anybody have it."

Smith is obviously lying here: if the data is so easy to get that nearly 800 companies already have it, there is simply no way to monitor & regulate what is done with that data. Some of these companies are false fronts, and the data is being used for criminal purposes — including fraud & industrial espionage. The public should refuse to support the governor in the next election until he prosecutes Smith for every stolen record in the DMV database. I recommend that we offer him a deal: 20 years in prison for a guilty plea, versus a life sentence for a quarter million deliberate violations of the fourth amendment (which amounts to high treason.)

> Federal law requires DMVs to provide driver information to government > agencies, and sell it to certain businesses...

The correct phrasing here would be "federal policy", not "federal law": A federal statute or regulation which violates the federal constitution is not law. The powers of the federal government are enumerated in Article I, and all other powers are reserved to the states by the tenth amendment. When the states created the federal constitution they did NOT create a federal police jurisdiction within the states. The federal government has no lawful authority to demand personal information on state residents, or dictate state DMV policy.

</comment><comment><USER20> Illinois DMV definitely sells names and addresses. They misspelled my name in a very unique way on my drivers license once, and I've received junk mail to that name ever since.

<comment><USER21> Did you ever present that license to anyone though? It could have been them that sold your info. e.g. concert venues who scan licenses, etc. Not that I doubt the DMV did it!

<comment><USER20> No, I noticed the error while walking out of the DMV and went back in line to have it corrected. The physical card never left the premises!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There are a bunch of websites with this information available for a very small fee.

It's incredible you can find names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, properties, cars owned, etc.

Most of the questions asked for identity verification are useless if so much information is effectively public.

And then there are soft credit checks...

My impression is that there is a huge blind spot in americans regarding these things, they not only don't care but are hostile to anyone pointing the problems.

I don't see this improving in the future.

</comment><comment><USER23> What other States allow their DMV to do this?

<comment><USER24> Pretty much all of them. NY DMV shares information with the private, foreign company running the 407 toll highway in Toronto. Canadians from other provinces have better data protection that prevents such sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Public information for sale:

> The database shows where people live, what cars are registered to them, > whether they have criminal records, and their driving histories.

> The only information it won't provide on any condition is driver medical > information and Social Security numbers, according to DMV officials. > Photographs are also not for sale.

</comment><comment><USER26> As is every other DMV. Also voting records. Chalk it up to bankrupt state governments.

</comment><comment><USER27> California does too.

I wonder if the new california privacy law allows you to opt out somehow.

</comment><comment><USER28> Pretty much all states sell this data. It's vital for auto insurance companies to be able to get up-to-date driving records for policy quotes.

<comment><USER29> The issue isn't for insurance companies (where there is consent).

> "Nobody — from agencies like the DMV to large corporations like Facebook and > Google — should be profiting from sharing or selling personal information > without meaningful consent. Congress must get serious about ending practices > that violate the privacy of ordinary Americans," Sanders said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> If it means a pleasant experience at the DMV... sign me up.

<comment><USER15> I like you, you're funny.

A pleasant experience at the DMV... hahaha!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Some of this is necessary, I think. When you get an auto insurance quote, companies like ChoicePoint (LexisNexis) are what provide driver history (accidents, violations, insurance fraud info, etc).

So it's not like they're Google/FB/Amazon using this data for ad purposes.

Obviously, not all of the money comes from carriers like this, but I wanted to point out that _some_ of it is legit.

<comment><USER3> What's to stop those same insurance companies from using it for marketing purposes?</comment></comment>


Facebook Is Trying Everything to Re-Enter China–and It's Not Working - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-zuckerbergs-beijing-blues-1485791106 <comment><USER2> good now if we can only get them out of north america and europe.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a good thing--these companies should not be helping the Chinese government subjugate people.

<comment><USER5> Agreed unfair trade practices and limiting personal freedoms has been the hallmark of the chinese communist party. We shouldnt be helping them.</comment></comment>


Can a Dress Shirt Be Racist? - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/can-a-dress-shirt-be-racist-6b74244446e9 <comment><USER3> "So here's my question: With the "ethnicity" question, is this entrepreneur courageously addressing the proposition that we're different according to our ancestry, and propelling us toward a post-racial future? Or is he pretending to be scientific as a marketing gimmick, while actually enforcing false, outdated and possibly dangerous ideas about race?"

No. He found out that if he asked questions about ethnicity to the customer he actually could size them better. Everything else in this article is in your head.

<comment><USER4> This is actually a well written and researched and interesting article about race as a social construct and as a physical reality. Perhaps you shouldn't just dismiss it because you (apparently) can't be bothered to think about these things. Also it's not exactly uncommon (or reprehensible) to hang an article like this off of a pithy and slightly overstated sound bite.

<comment><USER5> This "race as a social construct" stuff is the phrenology of the 21st century. It doesn't have any basis in science.

<comment><USER6> You are wrong.

First, historically, race was only firmly established as a legacy of the colonial era. For example, in the colonial era, how was it decided in Louisiana if one man was black or not? The answer is, less than 1/32 of his ancestry must be of "black blood"[0]. This sort of thinking and arbitrary ruling is how race was established as a social construct.

Science at the time, based on the physiology of skull shapes and other body features, was shaped in order to draw a line between the "superior" race and the "inferior" race; this is a belief we sometimes still carry. In modern science we know that there is enough variation in people that it is basically impossible to concretely associate certain genes with certain races[1]. So in fact, race IS a social construct; race is the generalizations we unfairly make.

[As a bonus, any two humans average 99.5% the same DNA]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One- drop_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule)

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

<comment><USER7> That doesn't refute the parent's point. There is more to race than some jackass using it as a means to discriminate. It is not just a "social construct".

<comment><USER6> I thought I effectively showed a "basis in science" (genetics), directly refuting the claim in the parent.

<comment><USER5> So your idea is genetics are a social construct?

<comment><USER6> I'm saying race is based on historical and social circumstances. This notion is further supported because races are scientifically (genetically) difficult to distinguish. Hence "race is a social construct" is in fact based in science, directly arguing against the parent comment.

<comment><USER8> > _race is a social construct is based in science_

This is especially silly and misleading. Race is considered a "social construct" _under the theory of Social Constructionism_. For people who don't subscribe to the theory of Social constructionism, race is not a "social construct". Social constructionism itself is not based on biological and evolutionary fact. It is a philosophical approach to the world that conveniently disregards biology, genetics, behavioral ecology, and enormous scale (n=millions) of statistical studies. When you remove Social Constructionism from your thesis, your entire argument falls apart.

Most people do not believe in discredited theories like social constructionism. The other posters in this thread are asking you to rework your argument without appeals to Social Constructionism, and you show you are unable to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the references cited in this article is a line of shoes released by Nike designed to fit Native Americans better. They measured 200+ native feet and determined that they were wider toward the toe than typical shoes.

While I don't culturally identify as native, there's no doubt that I am 1/16th Cherokee. As it turns out, I have what I call "duck feet". They are very wide up front. I didn't know about Nike's foray into native shoes, but I wish I had and that they still made them.

Rather than being offended, I would be excited to have some shoes that actually fit well. I usually end up with shoes that too big in other dimensions or toe-crampers.

<comment><USER10> Try Scandinavian shoes. Finns in particular seem to have built-in snow shoes, so Karhu runners are extra wide to accommodate their client base.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find it depressing that the sociologists are saying that race is (only) a social construct. I mean, sure, there's an element of truth to what they're saying, but there's also a truth that they're denying. We build these social constructs _because_ there's an external reality that they... well, let's say that they _oversimplify_. But the external reality is there, and it isn't going away.

The external reality is that there are real, physical differences between people that correlate at least somewhat with what we perceive as "race". That's reality, whether sociologists choose to acknowledge it or to ignore it.

<comment><USER12> So the problem with categorizing people into races is that there are many axes along which people can be divided into buckets, and any particular race grouping only has meaning in a particular place and time and will have totally arbitrary boundaries, which are as much cultural as they are genetic and physical. As long as people understand that, it's okay to talk about races tending to have certain qualities. Because culturally we've divided people based on those qualities.

But it's really important to understand that people of different races aren't different kinds of people. Any more than people who have blonde or brunette hair are different kinds of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think it's a reasonable question as someone who wears glasses and is Asian, I have to look for glasses designed for the different shape of our noses ([http://www.eyewearenvy.com/pages/asian_fit_glasses_about_s-1...](http://www.eyewearenvy.com/pages/asian_fit_glasses_about_s-152-htm)). Oakley also produces a line of "Asian" fit glasses and an article talking about the whole science vs. racism angle was rehashed here ([http://qz.com/138525/why-oakleys-asian-fit-sunglasses- arent-...](http://qz.com/138525/why-oakleys-asian-fit-sunglasses-arent-racist- just-science/)).

<comment><USER14> Wow, TIL... I always figured glasses were glasses, human heads were human heads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I suspect the problem could be eliminated by taking a few more measurements.

Whatever is systematically wrong that correlates with race is a form of error. You know that it's wrong because it is _measurable_. If it is measurable you can just turn it into a measurement which compensates for the error.

How about giving users a choice: workflow A with fewer measurements plus race question, or workflow B with a couple more measurements and no race question.

I suspect you have to get a circumference around the shoulders, the chest under the arms, the waist around the navel and around the hips-butt. Also, the circumference of the upper arm and neck circumference. If you have all these, I don't see how you can possibly mess up a T shirt fit.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ignoring the racial issue for a moment, I don't understand how they ended up with the questions at all.

> Naysayers told him that when customers input their measurements, they often > made mistakes — the idea wouldn't scale.

> Asking about waist size was insufficient, for example, because it gave no > indication of the size of one's midsection. So Skerritt added a question > about how far one's belly protruded. Other questions were too confusing, > like one about how T-shirts fit around your chest and shoulders.

1\. There are dozens of fitted clothes manufacturers. More every year. It doesn't look like they fail, or not scale. I see almost only positive reactions about them on twitter.

2\. Of course trivial measurements will not be enough. The article gives the example of midsection. But that's not other services ask for. Tailorstore asks for either common t-shirt size, 2-3 measurements, or if you actually want a fitted shirts, you provide: neck, chest, waist, hip, seat, shirt length, shoulder width, arm length, wrist. No need to ask about hanging bellies - <USER2> ask for measurements.

When they ask extra questions they seem to derive some ratios between basic sizes. Maybe it works, maybe not... but did they actually find out that taking own measurement doesn't work? I ordered some tailored shirts online, gave all my measurements and couldn't be happier with the result. Are the extra questions actually worth it? Maybe they did verify that, but it's not in the article, and I find that really annoying - here's the solution to what people told us will be the problem, we're not going to tell you if we verified that it is a problem.

<comment><USER17> You're probably better with a tape measure than I am. I'd have trouble putting a tape measure on my shoulders and positioning it in the right place — my shoulders are rounded, not angular. I'd probably screw up most of the other measurements as well, and I already have a tape measure. What about the ≈99.9%* of guys who don't? This sounds like a service for them.

* I made this number up just now, may be off by an order of magnitude or two

<comment><USER16> I used the metal, rolled up one, mostly used for DIY stuff. It worked :) (definitely wasn't precise though) You can also use one in any shop with shirts. I don't think it's that big deal really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if this kind of reporting is sponsored somehow by a competitor.

\---

He was essentially saying, Prove that it exists. And if you can't or won't prove it, then stop talking about it. Because without proof, the concept of race, as it pertains to variation in the human family, is too dangerous.

Let's open a conversation about this. I'm curious to hear people's lived experiences in this arena.

\---

Well the author already opened the conversation. Next up is probably a storm of Twitter responses casting this comapany as "racist".

</comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting that despite trying to be highly sympathetic, the article still paints Goodman in a bad light, in my opinion. All Goodman can say is that race is a continuum, not a finite set. But so what? Self defined race is still highly correlated with genes, and hence phenotype (in this case, body dimensions), so why is self-defined race not a useful category? Anyone with any knowledge of statistics, probability or machine learning can see through Goodman's platitudes. Maybe left-leaning anthropologists have other reasons for disliking these uses of the concept of race, but they need to be more intellectually honest.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting that it was the white folks that got the good fit, out of the box. Kind of makes the race thing seem like a hacked on solution to a fundamentally biased algorithm.

<comment><USER21> > Interesting that it was the white folks that got the good fit, out of the > box.

Assuming their market is primarily in the US, then 72% of their potential customers are white, 12% are black, 5% asian, and the rest something else [1].

That's for the US as a whole. I'd expect the subset of the US population that will buy online custom dress shirts tends toward the more affluent end of the population, where the skew is even more heavily toward white.

So the default option is the one that is best for the majority (by a large margin) of their customers. I don't see what is interesting about that.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States)

<comment><USER22> ... and a similar experiment in predominantly Han Chinese China likely results in the same thing biased towards Han Chinese, In Thailand towards Thais, and in Cambodia towards Khmer people.

My GF lived in China half a decade, and she had trouble with tailored clothes, because they could never accept her southern-European proportions.

The idea that the most common size should be the most common group is just business 101 (build for your customers).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Instead of asking for race/ethnicity, just say that the shirts are available in fit variations A, B, C, etc., and show photos of several models of all races each modeling the variation that fits that model best.

Leave it to the customer to notice that the majority of white models are wearing "A", the majority of black models are wearing "B", and so on and guess that if they don't know otherwise they have the best chance of getting a good fit by going with the variation that is best for the majority of models that look like them.

This still lets customers have the best shot at getting a great fit, and furthermore if it turns out wrong for a particular customer it is easier for them to realize they need to try another variation next time.

If I ordered a shirt and told the company I'm white and it did not fit well, it would not occur to me to go back and tell them I'm black on my next order, because I probably would not even be connecting race with fit.

With an A, B, ..., system, on the other hand, if my "A" shirt didn't fit right it would immediately occur to me that maybe the "B" shirt would be better.

<comment><USER23> _" Instead of asking for race/ethnicity, just say that the shirts are available in fit variations A, B, C, etc., and show photos of several models of all races each modeling the variation that fits that model best."_

That assumes people will accurately self-assess and honestly report their body types. And...you'd be very surprised at how few people can do that.

In fact, "vanity sizing" is quite common in the fashion business. This is a term meaning a label that says one size, often smaller than the _actual_ measurements of the garment, in order to make the buyer feel better about him/herself. (For instance, ever buy a pair of jeans in size 34? Chances are they're really a 36. The clothing company figures you'd refuse to admit to yourself that you're actually a 36. So it plays to your vanity, rather than risking your business by telling you something you don't want to hear.)

On the whole, your idea seems better than "race" or "ethnicity" as category. But the weird benefit of "race" or "ethnicity" is that it doesn't force the buyer to take a conscious self-assessment of his body type.

Perhaps another way to go about this would be to ask a series of questions. "Do you ever have the following problems buying shirts off the rack? [Problem 1,Problem 2,Problem 3,...,Problem N]." These would come with visualizations. Example: "The sleeves are usually too short."

<comment><USER24> I worked in men's clothing for quite a while, and I have an anecdote to report about customers self-assessing their size and cut. If you sell people what they ask for, they will hate you for it.

In my day, off-the-rack shirts came in a collar size, an arm length, and there were three cuts: tailored or "european," standard, and "full," for the pear- shaped gentleman. People sized themselves at least an inch too small on the collar, and would woefully under-report their arm length too. The problem, of course, was that as you gain weight, your neck grows in girth and you need a larger collar.

What about the arm length? Well, that's measured from the nape of the neck to the wrist. As you gain weight, you gain fat and/or muscle around your shoulders and upper arm, and that can increase the measured length of the arm, even though your skeleton remains the same. Customers would ask for a shirt in the size they wanted their neck to be, and if you sold it to them, they's squeeze into it, there's be an unsightly bulge, and they would decide that your shirts were unflattering.

One of the tricks in those days was to report that a particular shirt's measurement was more accurate in metric, so if the customer didn't mind, could I take a metric measurement... And I would sell them the correctly sized shirt. Although it was larger than they requested, it would look better because it fit properly, and they would see a thinner, fitter person in the mirror.

Needless to say, the exact same thing was true in the cut of the shirt. The endomorphs would ask for a standard, and the standards would ask for the tailored cut. And then they'd hate the shirt.

The best thing was to report that this particular manufacturer was off on their sizing, and just hand them the short that you could eyeball was right for them. They'd be back for more.

So where were we? Oh yes, you absolutely cannot rely on people self-selecting their body type. The best thing is to measure.</comment></comment></comment>


Number of web pages / number of people in the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+web+pages+%2F+number+of+people+in+the+world

<comment><USER2> I'm curious - how does this have a non-zero value in 1900?</comment>


"The Office" losing it's funk and charm...? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSDsT64cwnk&feature=channel_video_title

<comment><USER2> not bad as a viral video

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks friendstock, it's been really hard to drive up traffic. I'm new to this whole viral video scene...any tips?

<comment><USER2> I don't personally know much about viral videos... perhaps this post might help?

[http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies- behin...](http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many- viral-videos/)</comment></comment></comment>


10x programmers – 10x more selective - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosefk.com/blog/10x-more-selective.html

<comment><USER2> In my experience 10X is more to do with the environment than it is to do with the programmer. I have been 10X and more in the past over maybe a 10 year stretch when I was doing lots of greenfield development and I also had control over the design, architecture and system configs. But now, in an environment with messy legacy code, and no control over architecture or systems, I seem to be more like .02X. At some point I will have mastered refactoring a big ball of mud and I will be able to get to 10X again.

And in case you were thinking, rewriting from scratch is not sufficient to transform a big ball of mud into a greenfield.

In any case, the opportunities for refactoring big balls of mud are growing exponentially so it is a worthwhile skill to master.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not really sure if I'm qualified to comment on the selectivity idea, since nothing I've written has ever been scrapped (if you don't count my personal projects, that is). Mind you, I've never shied away from or maneuvered away from a project; I've just said up front that X and Y is how it should be implemented.

What I do know is that I have been the 10x guy up until my latest thing, where finally, thankfully, I'm surrounded by people who are on average better than me.

10x, though it sounds objective, is a very fluid term. What I've noticed is that everyone who plays at this level cares deeply about code quality. It's about art meeting functionality, and all of that being shipped on time. It's about avoiding technical debt, except in rare cases of grudging agreement in the face of cold hard facts.

10x is discipline and drive. It's not that they choose to, it's that they're DRIVEN to.

</comment><comment><USER4> The article used his own example of programming fixed-point arithmetic, plus Ken Thompson and Linus Torvalds. In everyday use, "10x programmers" describe those who produce work much quicker in everyday IT shops using Cobol or Java. Many programmers in these places are typically low on aptitude, and are only as productive as the number of years they've worked on the systems for their particular employer. Occasionally someone with some more aptitude ends up in one of these places and soon works a lot quicker, and gain the title "10x programmer", though may only do stuff 3 or 5 times quicker than average. Most of them get transferred out to some more meaningful project in the company, but management usually keep one or two of them stuck in that maintenance team, generally whoever agrees to do after-hours standby work.

</comment><comment><USER5> I believe in the 10x programmer... because my own productivity (as measured by some random objective metric) can change by that much over short and long terms.

I agree that this is a challenge for management. Writing good computer programs for 40+ hours a week is an unusual thing for a human being to do. Doing it at 10x over the long term is just plain unnatural.

Individuals seem to require their own (evolving) set of motivations and circumstances, making successes very challenging to replicate.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm going to comment. I really hope this doesn't get buried. That's absolutely true.

I call myself a 121 programmer, which is the MacLeod Sociopath of the programmer world. (911 are MacLeod Clueless because they're willing to throw down in an emergency that management created; 501 developers, who leave at 5:01, are MacLeod Losers.) I want to improve the value of my skill set by 1% every 21 days.

There is 10x of selectivity (choosing good projects) and also 10x of productivity (making good calls) with the latter especially prominent in powerful languages (e.g. Lisp). But "10x" doesn't happen overnight. It happens over a long time. Taking the 1%/21-days estimate (which is a wild guess, but the right binary order of magnitude) that means we go from 1x to 10x in 13.3 years (although I've actually seen people grow faster than that.)

The 10x programmers got that way by mandating that they learn, and ignoring career-incoherent work.</comment>


Philadelphia: The City of Unbrotherly Love - <AUTHOR> http://pauldipietro.org/2013/05/24/philadelphia-the-city-of-unbrotherly-love/

<comment><USER2> Tiny, tiny, condensed font = nearly unreadable.</comment>


Recruiters are scraping your email from Slack - <AUTHOR> http://anara.fr/slack-scraping-session/ <comment><USER2> Isn't this data already available? Does the js snippet change something about that?

<comment><USER3> No, I have been annoyed that slack doesn't show email addresses, even for people within my own organization.</comment></comment>


Judy Arrays - <AUTHOR> http://judy.sourceforge.net <comment><USER2> Intrigued, I looked into them a few months ago. My conclusions:

1\. They're patented by HP.

2\. They're highly tuned for a specific cache line size.

3\. They bring in a lot of code competing for space in the instruction cache. It may be optimal in benchmarks, but I suspect it could contribute to that general bloat miasma feeling your code gets when it's just too darn large.

I didn't run benchmarks myself, but overall I decided that (for me anyway) Judy arrays were probably not worth it over simpler alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER3> According to Wikipedia there is a patent that concerns these. <http://www.google.com/patents/US6735595>

</comment><comment><USER4> Two articles benchmarking Judy arrays compared to hash tables:

<http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=153>

<http://www.nothings.org/computer/judy/>

<comment><USER5> I really like that nothings.org article, for what it's worth: worth reading.

It is unfortunately not improved by the new update tacked to the beginning of the article. You're probably better off skipping that.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It looks like this was discussed a few years ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=859336>

That discussion is worth reading, but any new insights will have to go here, because that submission is old enough to have the discussion closed.

</comment><comment><USER6> Judy arrays are implemented as a trie and one of the cool things is that arrays can be sparse or dense. As a sparse array it is (almost) as fast as a hash table. As a dense array it basically works as a bit map which is one of, if not, the fastest data structure around.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder, if somebody took the same optimization approach (cache-line size optimization) to the tree/hash/etc. data-structures and applied them to matrices, would they be inspired to call them Bobby Tables?

<http://xkcd.com/327/> in case you don't get the reference.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use these extensively, love them. (The API is really hard at first though.)

<comment><USER9> I've used them too, for years .. its my 'go-to' for sparse arrays on any internal/utility projects I'm using. I'm a bit hesitant to ship anything using them to end-users, though, due to the HP patent issue .. but thats just a gut feeling. Technically, there's not much out there that gives me the ease-of-use and performance of the Judy API for large, sparse _or_ dense, datasets. I didn't find the API too challenging .. well, the fact is that once you get Judy integrated into your own datatype classes, its a dead cinch.

Sure would be nice to see Judy in modern architectures like Android/iOS, though ..</comment></comment>