Keep calm & carry on: What you didn't know about the reddit story - <AUTHOR> http://alexisohanian.com/keep-calm-carry-on-what-you-didnt-know-about <comment><USER3> Alexis you bastard, making me cry at work!

That was a beautiful post and really hit home in a weird day. Both my parents are getting old enough for me to worry about their health and I feel like I still haven't accomplished anything worthwhile. Sure I have a house/car/career etc. but just for once, I want to make them proud by doing something big. I've had about 3 hours of my 15-minutes of fame but nothing solid to rely on, like a stable startup or research career. The weird part is I feel a large part of my motivation comes from my desire to prove to them that they raised a good kid. I can't even imagine pushing myself to accomplish something if they aren't there to witness it. I just lost my grandpa last month and my dad expressed a very similar sentiment about him always trying to be the best son to his dad.

Thanks Alexis for sharing this. You're a good man.

<comment><USER4> > Alexis you bastard, making me cry at work!

Seconded. And also thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER5> That's what you guys get for chopping onions at work.

<comment><USER6> Alexis, this was an incredible post -- tremendously moving. You deserve some big props for sticking it through all that and achieving what you did. My mother had an aneurysm just as I was making a big move at work, and that kind of thing really puts things in perspective -- as your post did. Bravo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After focusing so much on the ones and zeroes, posts like this snap us back to all that really matters: other people.

In the past year, I have made dramatic changes in my life, both personal and business, for one reason: so that I can spend time with my mother who is suffering from severe dementia. We watch Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune every night together. I yell out all the answers and she laughs, not caring whether they're right or wrong.

Before she started slipping away last year, she told me 2 things:

"From the moment I first saw you, I knew I would love you unconditionally forever."

and

"I'm so proud of you."

Everything else from this point forward is gravy.

Thank you, Alexis.

<comment><USER8> Wow...I watched the same two shows with my mom. She spent much of her last year in the hospital. Except for an ice storm and one or two other days, every evening she was there, so was I.

I can tell you from experience that after she's gone, you will be very, very glad that you took the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Amazing. The moral of the story is that having an exceptionally independent, driving job like a startup actually makes you _better_ at weathering crises.

Pretty counter-intuitive. One would think that having more stability and security in the background would free up one's mind to be able to help and cope and the like. But it makes a lot of sense that the opposite is true. Even in the midst of crises, you don't want your life to be entirely about crisis management. A large dose of of independence and drive helps a lot with that. Being able to travel and still work helps. Feeling like you're still doing something that matters to you helps even more.

<comment><USER10> Tangentially, this also seems to illustrate why Alexis/reddit have been successful -- perseverance and flexibility are crucial to startups!

<comment><USER9> Yes, from the article:

"If you've worked with the spineless, you know how frustrating it can be to deal with their poisonous helplessness -- something that's only heightened in a startup where the most important thing you can do is not give up. And you'd better fucking believe that when you come home to a mother battling brain cancer and a father spending every waking hour taking care of her and running his own business, you don't complain, you don't cower, and you most certainly don't quit."

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I found it jarring that he took time out here to call someone he was working with at the time spineless.

<comment><USER12> I thought Alexis hit the nail squarely on the head with that paragraph actually. Helplessness really _is_ poisonous.

<comment><USER13> I'm currently in a situation where I have such a person close to me. It was very helpful to have that pointed out again.

I've managed to work 2 hours on my startup idea this evening. Whereas I otherwise probably would've given in to the demons ("it's 20:40 already.. too late to get anything useful done, I'll just play some videogames the rest of the evening").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My dad died of Glioblastoma when I was a teenager. He first noticed it as a sudden worsening of vision, followed by a breakdown of spatial relationships. My mom's boyfriend's best friend died of it too.

It's a horrible disease and the worst part about it is that it always comes back. Surgery and treatment might buy you 5 good years if you catch it early and it isn't as malignant. But it will always come back and kill you.

If anyone has any illusions that human personalities are made of more than the meat in our heads, watching someone die of a brain tumor will disabuse you of them. Bits of them disappear, and the remaining bits misfire and overcompensate for the bits that aren't there.

For anyone reading this, if your vision suddenly gets worse, don't just get new glasses. Go see a doctor. Most of our brain is devoted to visual processing, and if something isn't right it usually manifests there first.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the advice. My vision suddenly dropped out about two weeks ago. Hopefully I'll have health insurance in the next month and will be able to go to the doctor.

Definitely need to get this checked out...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've never met Alexis in person but I E-mailed him for startup advice several times over the years (including the tough months that he mentions in this post).

He always responded with a chipper E-mail and very helpful advice on everything from accounting to licensing agreements to acquisitions.

<comment><USER5> Only you never listened to me when I advised you to give me 51% of the equity in fleaf[l]icker!

But seriously, that's the magic of email, right? I'm just glad I was helpful. I only wish I had little elves who could help me get through my email faster...

*edited to sound less naughty auf Deutsch

<comment><USER17> > 51% of the equity in fleaficker

I just wanted to mention that "ficker" is the German version of the word "fucker", so if you ever get that equity, you might want to be careful about expansion

<comment><USER18> Another interesting German translation is "gift", which in English means "poison".

<comment><USER19> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend>

There are links to false friend lists at the end of that page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My uncle, who was like a second father to me, died from a class IV Glioblastoma multiforme a few months ago. I spent about a week in the hospital with him and the family (we spent xmas in the hospital, actually). He was 60, played hockey every week, super healthy, super smart, loved life.

Within two months of being diagnosed he was dead. He first had a seizure playing hockey and evrybody thought it was a stroke or an aneurysm. A month later he lost control over half of his body, then went in and out of coma for the final week... I had a chance to talk to him and hold his hand, tell him how important he was for me and all that stuff that we never tell each other. He could understand what we said, but had a hard time communicating... And then he was gone.

Terrible disease.

I'm getting married in 4 days, and we've decided to give money to charities working on cancer in the name of the wedding guests. We figured it was better than spending the money on chocolates or whatever (though we also have some of those).

<comment><USER21> Your money will be appreciated. I can tell because I'm doing Glioblastoma Multiforme research myself, so thank you.

<comment><USER5> Are you working with NIH by any chance? I obviously really appreciate the research you're doing (and as far as cancers go, I know there are much more significant ones - from a statistical pov - but your work is very much appreciated by the Ohanian family). Any not-for-profits you'd recommend for exceptional work? ABTA.org has been our goto thus far.

<comment><USER21> I'm part of a research group at UMASS that has close collaborations with MGH and two cancer centers in The Netherlands (where I'm originally from). Concerning the statistical significance you are right, breast tumors are probably having an impact on more families around the world. However, we are trying to develop strategies that work for all cancers so with a bit of luck we will help other patients and families too.

The work we do is financed by multiple sources. I am not too familiar with specific charity organizations since I am not from the United States. I will ask around in the lab(s) what people believe are the best organizations to donate to in you want to help Glioblastoma Multiforme research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This very much echoes my own personal experience. My father was diagnosed with a terminal disease when I was high school. At the time he was given two years to survive. But my father is a fighter and he found a cocktail of food supplements that has allowed him to survive for 17 years now. After college, I have found that startup life provided both an outlet when I needed to hide from the world and offered the flexibility to be there for my family when that was required -- with all the overtime I normally put in no boss I've ever had gave me crap about taking time away or working remotely when needed.

I'm really happy to see this subject getting attention in the tech community. Caregiving is hard and can be a huge strain on families and caregivers. That's why I became the first employee at caring.com when the opportunity came my way. Being able to apply my technical expertise to such a personal subject and hopefully help make some peoples lives go a little smoother during one of the roughest periods of their lives is immensely satisfying.

Thank you for sharing your story, Alexis.

</comment><comment><USER23> Throws into sharp relief the regular stories we see of startups floundering after a few weeks/months for "personal reasons".

One takeaway from this that I saw was that having awesome co-founders is a must (as in the case of Reddit). Obviously this was a terrible time for Alexis; but I imagine it was a bit scary for the co-founders as well - <USER2> knowing if he would be about and in what state.

Thanks for sharing Alexis :)

</comment><comment><USER24> My "problems" look minuscule in comparison. I am inspired to look past them and try harder. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER5> Not knowing anything about your problems, please don't consider my one story as a litmus test for 'life problems.' Everyone has them and mine look petty in the light of most people's (thinking on a global scale here). Just know that having something/someone you can invest your time & energy into can be incredibly fulfilling (and distracting, when you need it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Alexis, I always felt that even though you weren't the coder, your personality was critical to Reddit's success and is indelibly stamped all over the site's comments and their sense of humour. Just as PG formed the soul of news.YC, so you and Steve formed the soul of Reddit.

To know that you managed to imprint the humour and affection that I see there now through all of this only makes me more impressed.

</comment><comment><USER26> Alexis is pretty much my hero.

<comment><USER27> He's the wind beneath my wings.

<comment><USER28> He is the sunshine on my shoulders

<comment><USER29> Alexis - kn0thing compares, kn0thing compares, to you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "If you happened to meet me during that time, you probably wouldn't have known it."

Had no idea. Later when I read about this (mentioned on some earlier post too) and the scaling issues the team was battling with at the time, I came to appreciate getting the chance to visit Reddit even more.

</comment><comment><USER31> This story seriously choked me up. Simply incredible and highly inspirational. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is a truly valuable contribution to the startup community--as inspiring as it is devastating. We should all aspire to such courage, motivation, and good intentions in the work we do ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER33> Man that hurts, it reminds me of 'The Boxer' by Simon and Garfunkel. Much respect for hanging in there, and just when I was thinking you should post a picture of your mom you did.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER34> much respect. thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER35> This has been said before and better here and elsewhere, but thanks for sharing your story Alexis, very inspiring and moving. Perseverance like yours is sensational.

</comment><comment><USER36> Alexis, thank you for sharing. It always helps to have a reminder that focusing on taking one step at a time is the way to get through anything.

Keep calm and carry on!

<comment><USER5> FWIW, that slogan wasn't quite ever used (thankfully, because it was for if the Nazis invaded Britain): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Calm_and_Carry_On>

That iconic photo of the London library after a Blitz attack was a postcard I bought many years ago while studying abroad in the UK. I don't recall why I bought it, but I've kept it on the wall at my desk everywhere I've gone. There's something so wonderfully powerful about seeing these men calmly perusing the library stacks amidst ruins from what was then a fairly routine bombing run at a time when it was far from clear that "the good guys" would win.

It's such a splendid 'fuck you' to the Nazis (or whomever your 'enemy' may be) to carry on living your life just as you were planning -- or better yet, enjoying it even more than you'd planned because it's in spite of the circumstances.

I've never been bombed, nor will I probably ever be, so it's always pretty easy to realize what kinda of life lottery ticket I've ended up with.

<comment><USER37> It's pretty amazing, but people do rapidly adjust to bombing or other high- ambient-threat environments, possibly overly much so. Still obviously worth avoiding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Alexis is a brave person. Many people would have probably given up but it is amazing how he kept working all along. A lot of respect for this person.

</comment><comment><USER39> While you visited your mum regularly, didn't you feel guilty not being in MD with her?

<comment><USER39> For the downmodders: is an honest question; I wasn't being flippant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Motto to run a startup by: "Keep Calm, Carry on" -Alexis Ohanian

</comment><comment><USER41> Thanks for the post, you have adjusted my life course.

</comment><comment><USER42> And you thought you wouldn't cry today.

Thanks for this one.

</comment><comment><USER43> I see stories on Reddit all the time that people say made them cry. I've never been affected by them, but this one choked me up real hard.

</comment><comment><USER44> Meh.

Am I the only one who wishes all this personal stuff had nothing to do with the business?

Is it some new rule these days that startup founders have to prove they are 'real people' by sharing all the details of their lives? I mean, sure .. its sad to have to go through all that, but that stuff is personal.

This story really has very little to do with reddit, other than to serve as a social means of establishing 'personality' behind the scenes of the service.

Downvote me into oblivion, but I really have to say - fair enough, dude. You had a rough time. But that is life, you know? Need the whole world know you are suffering the normal, perfectly mundane, plain ol' human condition?

I suppose in these techno-fuelled racey days of million-dollar teenagers it helps to have a little soap opera, to keep the balance, eh ..

<comment><USER5> I didn't write it for pity and I hope it didn't come across that way. I left reddit nearly a year ago now. And I thought the one thing missing from the multitude of 'reasons to start a startup' posts was that it could actually be an incredibly beneficial personal decision - especially in times of dealing with the "normal, perfectly mundane, plain ol' human condition" that affects us all.

I also don't think I'd have done nearly as many of those alien doodles or invested nearly as many hours as I did in reddit and the community had it not been an outlet for everything else. In that regard, I think it has a lot to do with reddit.

Starting a startup with Steve was one of the best decisions I could've made, just for a very unexpected reason. I hope it convinces a few others that it's worth taking the plunge.

<comment><USER44> I just don't see how its applicable to connect your experience with the fact that you started reddit .. I mean, fair enough, you have a lot of Internet celebrity credits, but you're spending them by telling the world details about your life that have no real bearing on your profession.

The moral of the story? I guess it is that you should always try to persist in life no matter what gets thrown at you. I just found myself realizing, in the middle of your post, that I was spending my life reading about someone I don't even vaguely know, talking about how sad they were that their dog died. Is this really what its all about?

<comment><USER45> I am just really cringing for you right now... I know you don't really mean this, you just picked a bad article to quit reading right in the middle of before making a comment.

Edit: per the commenter's followup, I withdraw my benefit-of-the-doubt.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Elton McDonald built a tunnel - <AUTHOR> http://www.macleans.ca/society/elton-mcdonald-and-the-incredible-true-story-behind-the-toronto-mystery-tunnel/

<comment><USER3> When I was a kid, we used to hang out in an abandoned Georgian cold-store - <USER2> was on the grounds of my school, with an entrance hidden in a thicket.

We called it "Dick Turpin's Cave", even though it was self-evidently no such thing, but it was damnably cool - both figuratively and literally - and on a hot summer's day, sneaking off from games to go loiter in our brick-lined flagstone-floored cave and play pog or what have you was... special. And probably incredibly dangerous. One end of it was collapsed - it was shaped like a cross with an entrance in the ceiling of one lobe.

I more than understand the appeal. There's some innate human instinct to tunnel - perhaps at some point in our history we made burrows to live in, in the absence of other construction materials - I mean, we lived in caves, so...

</comment><comment><USER4> Seymour Cray, the famous supercomputer architect (Cray-1, etc.), built a tunnel under his house:

      Another favorite pastime was digging a tunnel under his
      home; he attributed the secret of his success to "visits
      by elves" while he worked in the tunnel: "While I'm
      digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me
      with solutions to my problem."

\-- [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Cray) , [http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~toby/writing/PCW/cray.htm](http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~toby/writing/PCW/cray.htm) , [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-1) , [http://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards- Sup...](http://www.amazon.com/Supermen-Seymour-Technical-Wizards- Supercomputer/dp/0471048852/)

</comment><comment><USER5> What a great story. Help this kid build a few more tunnels:

[http://www.gofundme.com/objrxk](http://www.gofundme.com/objrxk)

</comment><comment><USER6> When I was a kid, me and my brother used to scour an abandoned monastery. The materials we gathered there - door frames, plywood, nails, screws, we used to modify an existing animal shelter. We saw a hole in the wooden structure and then proceeded to dug down about 1,5 meters. From there we dug sidewards to construct our own "bunker".

Many times the tunnel would collapse, and eventually the construction became an "open-tunnel" process. Digging a hole and then covering it up with a wooden ceiling.

I can still feel the excitement of having our own "secret space" we entirely built ourselves. Constantly talking about how to expand and improve the structure was more fun then actually using it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of a saying I like about startups: The key to success isn't having the biggest shovel or digging the most holes, it's having the discipline to just keep digging in the same place.

For whatever inaccuracies there may be, it's something I always try to keep in mind.

<comment><USER8> Kind of the antithesis of "Jack of All Trades, Master of None"

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My elementary School was built in the countryside where once was a train station. The only thing left was A LOT of bricks. Kids used the bricks and trees to build several forts, each one owned by a different faction. We took advantage of playground's most strategic spots. There were wars, alliances, betrayals... It was very fun.

Every summer the teachers would go to the playground and destroy the forts, because they thought them to be too dangerous. Yet, we built them again at the beginning of each school year. Soon after I went to middle school, the adults decided to remove all the bricks.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think I would like this kid.

</comment><comment><USER11> Relevant XKCD [http://xkcd.com/1501/](http://xkcd.com/1501/)

<comment><USER12> Regarding the lead masks case, how about: Two guys were interested in taking some weird drugs (equivalent of "shrooms" today). They met someone who agreed to give them the drugs, and as part of the ritual gave them the instructions "Be at the place arranged at 16.30. Take capsules at 18.30. After feeling the effects, protect half the face with lead masks. Await the agreed signal"[0]. They took the drugs, OD'd and died.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Masks_Case](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Masks_Case)</comment></comment>


Why Do Employers Rarely Offer Explanations to Rejected Candidates? - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-do-employers-rarely-offer-explanations-rejected-ambra-benjamin?trk=hp-feed-article-title-comment <comment><USER3> Not only does fear of lawsuits prevent companies from disclosing no-hire reasons, it prevents them from even recording those reasons internally.

If you get rejected and don't know why, take heart: a year from now the company also won't know why. You can apply again as if it were Groundhog Day.

<comment><USER4> We keep a record of all coding exercises performed by people who want to come in for an interview. We reference it for those who reapply to see if there has been improvement. All of our interview questions are in a github repo and peer reviewd so you don't get those brain teaser useless questions.

I wish we took notes during interviews. On well. We still remember candidates who apply multiple times.

<comment><USER5> If people are graded based on improvement, does that mean you could play the long game and intentionally fail the first time, then win the award for "most improved" next year?

To get this out of the way, here's my implementation for this year:

      int main() {
          return 1;
      }

Let me know when you're ready for next year's submission.

<comment><USER6> If you know what you're doing, it's difficult to look like you're trying to figure out what you're doing.

If you had the acting skills to convincingly give off the impression that you're a novice programmer, you've also got the skills to convincingly give off a more directly useful impression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Former technical recruiter, current CEO here.

The recruiting and hiring process as presently practiced by most firms is an enormous waste of everyone's time. We are inefficient in how we gather information from applicants and how we communicate it to them.

This is partially because it's hard to standardize the information needed for each job and available from each candidate. By the time you meet the minimum requirements of gathering information about an applicant, sharing it with your team and getting them to make a decision, much time has passed. Time when you should have been doing other things.

Then you face the question: How much more time can I spare sharing with the candidate the reasons why they were rejected? A recruiter may get the decision from the VP Engineering, but not know the reasons. If you do know the reasons, some of them will make the candidate upset, and they aren't always fixable. (What if all you can say is: The hiring manager didn't like you. Wasn't impressed. You don't seem smart enough for this role...?) That is: sharing all the reasons for rejection will lead to a huge waste of time and emotional energy with someone who you may never speak with again. Except in the rare cases where you see potential, there's almost no incentive to go into detail.

I've written more here, for those who are interested:

[https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/13992315?trk=prof- sm](https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/13992315?trk=prof-sm)

<comment><USER8> To your point of huge emotional drain, I was surprised at the behavior that the article mentioned about rejected candidates reacting to feedback. It's like they never felt failure before...

I like her saying - chew the meat, spit out the bones and thank them for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I always make a point of trying to give unsuccessful candidates feedback - especially when it's "we love your enthusiasm, get some experience under your belt and let's talk again".

A candidate who didn't get hired and came back stronger is EXACTLY who I want working with me, and its shortsighted of companies to burn off a candidate as soon as they stumble on fizzbuzz or something equally bullshitty.

</comment><comment><USER10> I once received feedback after being rejected for a position. In this particular case I knew full well why I hadn't been given me the job, but nonetheless their willingness to open up about their decision making process made a big and lasting impression on me.

Of course, it was a startup. No company with more than 20 employees would probably even consider doing something like this, and unfortunately I doubt that will change anytime soon. However - if you're ever in a position to safely communicate with a rejected candidate, I would suggest you at least consider it. They may not be suitable now, but things do change.

At the other end of the spectrum are companies or teams that don't even bother notifying candidates they've been rejected. I'm sure they have good reasons, but to me that sends a negative signal.

<comment><USER11> > At the other end of the spectrum are companies or teams that don't even > bother notifying candidates they've been rejected. I'm sure they have good > reasons, but to me that sends a negative signal.

As someone who's done that before, it's because my plate is too full (my own fault), which is why I'm looking for candidates, and I'm busy dealing with everybody who is still in the pipeline or getting used to working with the person who got through the pipeline.

Then I tell myself "Fuck, I really should send those people an email explaining my decision. But I don't know what to say or how to not sound like a dick. Fuck it, I'll do it tomorrow".

Then this repeats for a week. Then two weeks. Then three weeks.

Then I tell myself "Fuck, if I do it now, I'm just going to look like an even bigger dick for not having done it yet. Best never contact this person ever again and if they happen to bump into me in real life, pretend I didn't see them and hope they don't recognise me."

That said, big companies have professionals whose job it is to make sure this doesn't happen.

<comment><USER12> _I don 't know what to say or how to not sound like a dick._

I'm sure you know the stock phrases. If you don't, "Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, but we've decided to move on with another candidate. Good luck with your job search" is perfectly adequate. If it's been a few weeks, and you feel you need to apologize for the delay -- then of course do so. Really, it does help.

About the only "dick move" is sending no response at all. People don't need lengthy explanations and reinforcement of their positive traits. They just need an _answer_ (yes or no) and, perchance, _some_ acknowledgement of the fact that they're human beings, and have made a significant investment of their time and energy in talking with you.

It still amazes me how many companies don't get this.

 _That said, big companies have professionals whose job it is to make sure this doesn 't happen._

I think what happens in big companies is that everyone _assumes_ someone has the responsibility to do this, but no one ever does.

<comment><USER11> > I'm sure you know the stock phrases.

I think it has more to do with _feeling_ like a dick and not wanting to say No explicitly because it causes emotional discomfort. So you procrastinate to avoid that discomfort.

I'm sure you've heard of the concept of "fade out" in dating. Same thing.

I know on a logical level that this makes me a dick and that I shouldn't do it. But on an emotional level, it's _so much easier_ to avoid making an implicit decision explicit.

That said, I hold everyone who's ever followed up of their own accord in very high regard. If I don't say anything for two weeks _send me an email_.

<comment><USER12> Hmm -- sounds like you've fallen into a role (communicating yes/no status to candidates) that you basically aren't comfortable with. Right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Quick answer from the article:

>In a litigious society, and particularly in the aftermath of many of the class action and civil lawsuits of the late 90s and early 00s, companies became hypersensitive in order to protect their interests. As such, many companies adopted a blanket approach to dealing with things like interview feedback for candidates by simply declining to give any details.

<comment><USER14> Which makes perfect sense. The company doesn't derive any benefit from telling you why they didn't hire you. There's no reason to do it if it involves risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> At HireArt (W12) we've been working on a feedback feature for awhile and are close to finally releasing it. We have a fairly rigorous screening process, and every candidate is assessed by a grader according to a rubric. Our thinking was that if we provide this assessment to employers, surely we could provide it to candidates, too.

When we spoke to a labor attorney about this awhile back, their first reaction was basically that we would be insane to do it, because of the legal liability.

We got comfortable with the idea of feedback because we think that we have a clear, documented process that stands up to scrutiny. However, I think for many employers, recruiting decisions ARE arbitrary and unfair. Honest feedback would merely expose the decisions for what they are - reliant on personal affinity with candidates, vague notions of "culture fit", and gut decisions. There's very little quality training for how to ask good questions, evaluate those responses, and render a hiring decision. If candidates could actually hear the hiring manager and recruiter's thoughts, they'd rightfully be pretty angry.

<comment><USER16> You're dead right: hiring is hard. Hiring with quality training, repeatable processes, feedback loops, etc. is _incredibly hard_. For most companies, whether they like to admit it or not, a B-grade process is "good enough". And the ROI to take it to A+ is either non-existent or hard to prove.

Here's the thing, though: that doesn't mean your labor attorney is wrong. One employee says something to a rejected candidate _that could be interpreted as labor discrimination_ , and it doesn't matter how rigorous your process is, you're still in for the cost and time of a lawsuit to prove it.

How do you build the 0.1% risk of a company-ending lawsuit into your business case?

<comment><USER17> It is hard. The problem is that it's also hard to back out of a bad hire, so the cost of making a mistake is tremendously high.

I'm a very "right to work" (bullshit term I know) oriented person, in that I think neither companies nor their employees should be obligated to each other at all. Firing/quitting should be frictionless and easy. Instead, firing is wraught with legal problems such that you can't even fire an employee unless you can monetarily justify the cost of a lawsuit against their impact of being a negative influence, or they're part of some indiscriminate layoff procedure.

If I'm quitting or changing jobs, I'm harangued about it left and right by managers as to why or how this could happen.

Let's not pretend we owe each other anything and just move on like any other business transaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I try to do this whenever I am the one talking through the results of the interview with a candidate but only if the candidate seems open to it. It seems like a valuable thing to do even from the company's perspective. If you are considering doing this: It isn't always received positively so you have to be prepared for that. You and your company will be judged in this conversation and it's likely that the candidate will not agree with you. Also, if the decision is final (for now or forever) make that very clear right away so no one wastes their time arguing their case. It seems best to approach it with the mindset that no interview process is perfect and your conclusion is based on your side of the exchange you had (which may just be a few hours with the person); it's possible your company's assessment is wrong for some reason but you've made your best effort to make the correct decision. It's easy to come off as arrogant when you're the side doing the rejecting. I have successfully offered feedback and later hired a candidate (more than once!) when they returned after taking on a new project that helped them grow in a way that addressed the feedback. Our company has also changed its collective mind about some people when we have had success with another candidate or found a particular project or situation that minimizes the risk of whatever we were concerned about (for near-hires). An interview that results in a rejection isn't necessarily a permanent dead end.

</comment><comment> blubb-fish I am currently in the situation of playing the HR role for hiring a developer in our start-up - for which I am actually working as a Data Scientist.

I not just almost always give a reason for why we decided against a candidate - I even often give advice which might be relevant for future applications.

Why am I not afraid of a law suit? B/c the hiring process I designed is based on a couple of quick tests directly relevant to the position - so it's pretty clear and objective why we decide how we decide.

Most companies though actually base those decision on unsound and subjective information ... of course, those are worried about being blamed for that.

<comment><USER19> You are a rare breed. I wish it was standard practices everywhere. People really need feedback to correct something they are doing wrong. I would love to be interviewed by you just for the feedback.

<comment><USER20> The internal recruiter at GitHub gave me a couple sentences of feedback passed on from the interviewers when I was turned down after the final interview round. I appreciated it, it was helpful, and I saw how I could have done better at the interview, although I still thought they were making a mistake. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Oddly, Facebook(where the author works) is the _only_ tech company that has given me actionable feedback.

<comment><USER22> This was my experience as well. It was refreshing.

<comment><USER23> So, does that mean they're not afraid of lawsuits because they are the 800lb gorilla with a huge war chest?

<comment><USER21> Or it could mean they are determined to change status quo. Take your pick

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My experience has been the reason that I (and my peers) say nothing is because of a disconnect between knowledge and authority. I've interviewed thousands of candidates in my career and I almost always know before I finish up the interview whether or not we are going to bring that person in for another interview (at which point the team votes if we offer).

More than anything else, the number one reason that an otherwise good candidate doesn't get to continue is because of a disconnect around what the word "Senior" means. Every company has a different bar set for what qualifies as "Senior", but in most places I've been that bar is relatively high, so if we advertise for that position externally it means we don't have someone internal who's met the bar for promotion yet. We can't in good conscious hire someone in as a "Senior" that is not at least as qualified as the people we already have who didn't make the cut for promotion. Title inflation hurts because what happens is you might have been "Senior" at your last three employers but you don't make the bar for "Senior" or sometimes even "Mid" where you're applying.

As the interviewer there's very little I can actionably provide you that addresses the above without getting into a conversation about the possibility of hire at a lower level, which I don't have the authority to offer since I'm not the hiring manager. Additionally, I try to do everything I can to respect the candidate and preserve their dignity during the interview process. If they're bombing it, I don't want them to feel like they're bombing it. It's not possible to both do that and tell them at the end that they aren't good enough to cross the threshold for the role. This is especially difficult for me and many of my peers because we're engineers and not really "people persons", so we err on the side of saying nothing vs risk saying something that crushes someone.

<comment><USER25> Wouldn't that suggest that your job specs are rather lacking? I mean, instead of saying "Senior", you could just describe exactly what you expect and require in the candidate.

<comment><USER24> The issue there is because of the variability of meaning in the English language and the way job ads are written in general. Obviously my employer puts more than just "Senior" in a job ad, but it doesn't change the fact that companies everywhere put a laundry list of expected skills in their ads, so us doing the same doesn't provide any real filter mechanism. That's why we do technical phone screens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> because the one doing the rejecting doesn't have to, so they don't. there's absolutely no upside unless you want to spite someone intentionally.

see also: friendship, dating, sales, party invitations

<comment><USER27> Your "see-also's" provide good perspective. It's not just legal.

Some of the situations you identify (dating, friendship, sales, as well as interviews) have the attribute of "found nothing compelling". There was no single problem, but nothing emerged in the package or the interview that stood out.

In this case, the lack-of-match is not obviously the candidate's fault, and trying to provide feedback is forcing a conclusion ("that's your problem right there") that isn't justified by the information gathered.

And the best thing in such a case may be to say nothing, because you know nothing. ("Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.")

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ive always offered to give detailed feedback to my candidates that didn't pass a technical screen. I'd say about 80% of them were eager to hear it, and were grateful to get information that could help them get better at coding, or at least interviewing. It leaves people with a good impression of the company, and you get the satisfaction of knowing you helped someone. You aren't going to get sued for telling someone which type of sorting algorithm is most efficient for x sized data set.

<comment> loup-vaillant Wait a minute, 1 candidate out of 5 _wasn 't_ eager to hear about the technical feedback? Any idea why?

<comment><USER28> Those have usually been ones that did very poorly, so they probably already have some idea of what they were missing.

Some candidates have other offers to fall back on and just don't care that much, and some just don't want to discuss technical details with someone in a non technical role, which is understandable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Because they can. Because job openings are scarce enough that people are applying anyway, regardless of being treated like shit. That's why we tolerate "but we're scared of lawsuits" as a legitimate excuse.

This sort of thing (and hundreds of other similar phenomena) doesn't show up in unemployment metrics, but in a healthier economy, it doesn't happen as much, because people dislike working for assholes.

It's a bit like how an Australian 5% unemployment (at $12.30 minimum wage) is very different from an American 5% unemployment (at $7.25 minimum wage) or a North Korean 5% unemployment (making $0.40 at Kaesong); The supply demand curve on employment is real, but it extends beyond tangible quantities like wages and into ways the employer behaves towards its employees & potential employees, because for workers, civil treatment is to some extent fungible with wages. In the US, we have much less labor regulation and more lawsuits, and this is the equilibrium we have arrived at in the current economic climate; In a different economic climate, we would arrive at a different equilibrium.

The official understanding of the problem is plagued by Goodhart's Law - <USER2> can measure wages, but not being an asshole, so we will favor policies which push on one but ignore the other, and we can expect assinine behavior wherever there is even a little bit of profit to be gained; We sample and optimize "Unemployment", "Inflation", and corporate revenue growth as indicators of the economy's health, and a lot of other things have fallen by the wayside as we have reassured ourselves or worried ourselves with those numbers.

</comment><comment><USER30> I get it that giving feedback can expose a company to lawsuits and takes a lot of time, now, what's the excuse for not even informing the candidate of the rejection? many companies simply stop communicating.

<comment><USER14> I think it's because they don't want to be in the position of making an offer to someone they explicitly rejected when the preferred candidate didn't work out.

<comment><USER30> Hmm, in my case at least with a bunch of companies, they had laid out the interview process (say, 3 or 4 steps) and they stopped communicating after the 2nd or 3rd step (with more to come) so I don't think they had me as a secondary alternative, I don't know why they can't just say "Sorry, you are not the right fit for us" and _then_ stop communicating for the legal / time waste reasons the article gives.

<comment><USER14> That does seem a bit rude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The lawsuit explanation is only half the answer.

The reason that companies need to worry about lawsuits is that the hiring process is usually not very strenuous. When people make arbitrary and capricious decisions, bias tends to be a thing.

</comment><comment><USER32> Relying on interviews is not a great hiring strategy [1]

Better to use testing, either by psychometrics or assessment days (group tasks, short notice presentations etc.). [2]

[1] [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140606071003-7589947-no- cor...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140606071003-7589947-no-correlation- between-interviewing-and-on-the-job-performance)

[2] [http://www.inc.com/articles/2002/01/23815.html](http://www.inc.com/articles/2002/01/23815.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> The reason is almost always "There was a better candidate"

<comment><USER34> This doesn't really describe large companies, which often aren't hiring to fill specific roles. If that was the only thing stopping them from hiring you, they'd just hire the both of you.

<comment><USER33> We had X number of openings, and there were X people who were better than you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The notion about lawsuits is basically the answer.

I've interviewed and hired hundreds of people and the real reasons are usually pretty banal, e.g. not a good match between skills and requirements, wants too much money, etc. so in cases where somebody _does_ hear something and they hear "not a good fit" that honestly is usually the case. It's hard to provide more specifics because interviews don't really uncover deep specifics about candidates.

On occasion I've rejected people for less common reasons also, e.g. behavior problems during the interview, poor attitude, etc. and we have to keep those things pretty confidential from the candidate because it _would_ be used in a lawsuit even if it's not an example of discrimination. All the "culture fit" notions in startup-land would be other examples of this kind of rejection.

There's of course all kinds of discrimination in hiring and companies hide behind these practices all too often. I've never been part of this kind of thing thankfully, but I can imagine.

tptacek's old company has more rigid hiring practices that produce what I would guess are strong metrics that help them find good candidates but _also_ might protect them in the case of a lawsuit.

I've _also_ been on the receiving end of rejections of course. Before the second dot-com boom/bust companies used to actually contact you back with a "not a good fit". After that you usually just don't hear anything unless you really press the recruiters.

On occasion, when the recruiting department isn't as well put together as might be expected, real reasons will leak out and those are also surprisingly interesting:

\- salary demands are too high and exceed even senior execs. I don't make all that much out of the ordinary for my experience level and position, so that brought a lot of insight into how they function as a company

\- bad culture fit - depending on the company I actually felt relieved by some of these rejections and perturbed by others.

\- the weirdest one was where the company's internal hr processes were so broken, and they had some sort of internal clock on candidates, that they were not able to process me through the interview rounds in a timely fashion, so they rejected me because it was taking too long to process me. I can say that the interview and hiring process was a real shit show so it didn't surprise me at all, but I found it impressively annoying. I _did_ think about suing them, but then I thought about what I wanted out of the lawsuit and decided not to bother.

<comment><USER36> What type of "behavior problems" have you seen?

<comment><USER35> People showing up to interviews drunk or high, clear untreated mental health problems, etc.

One guy showed up hung over after walking a few miles to the interview after he wrecked his car the night before while out binge drinking and drunk driving.

I had one large guy block the exit from the interview room and demand that we hire him to do GPU programming, even though he clearly knew nothing about the subject. We said "sure" and then once he got out of the way had security come and remove him.

You really never know what you'll encounter when you call people in for a chat.

<comment><USER36> Wow. Can you elaborate on the mental health cases? Are we talking about mood disorders like depression or detachment from reality like schizophrenia or something else?

<comment><USER35> I probably can't diagnose correctly, but the ones I dealt with personally reminded me very strongly of some schizophrenic family members I have when they've stopped taking their medication.

One guy had to ask to leave the interview multiple times to go wash his hands.

That sort of thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Turn it around. Imagine that you have several offers from different companies.

After you choose one (and you can choose only one), do the other companies have reason to get all mopey and feel offended to hear no reason for the rejection?

Of course they don't. Why should candidates feel any differently when a company chooses someone else?

<comment><USER38> How does a candidate improve on himself/herself if a company gives a stock phrase? Maybe doing a mock interview, but it's difficult to replicate the stressors associated with an interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I once applied for company X back in 2014. I spend about 2 months on the application, conducting research, getting advice from friends, and doing my utter best to come up with a resume/motivation letter that would stand out. I didn't receive any feedback. What's more... when I called to asked about my application they pretty much got angry and sad: ''well, we receive a lot of application and don't have the time to respond to each application''. Till this day, I still can't get over it!

</comment><comment><USER40> most companies don't even bother calling or writing you to tell you 'no'. or they string you along endlessly until you get tired of asking, or you feel like you're becoming a pain.

</comment><comment><USER41> Because I don't care.

If you don't think I'm a good fit then it's fine, let's just move on with life. We in tech are lucky enough that there is always another job around the corner.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've just hired several new employees and at the risk of sounding all "firstworldproblems" it's a more draining and tricky process than I expected (not too dissimilar to being the interviewee, to be fair).

This article nails it by saying judgments are often subjective or open to argument - in my case, it was always either down to experience or personality, and with the latter one, you're not going anywhere good by telling a candidate they weren't proactive enough, keen enough, friendly enough, or whatever.

<comment><USER26> as the old adage goes, finding a job is a full time job.

and so is finding the right candidate. if you rush, it can lead to a huge, costly mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I used to offer feedback to rejected candidates... until a person felt that was unwelcome and left us an extremely angered review on a trusted website. I have been careful with words and have tried to avoid confrontational or subjective topics. That didn't seem to matter much to them.

All in all be thoughtful of the person in front of you and try not to be a jerk. Be prepared despite that some people will not want to hear what you have to say.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think the biggest reason is the generic self serving reason. They simply aren't going to waste time on you unless you can help them. Something to keep in mind.

</comment><comment><USER45> I just assume the simplest explanation: there were at least a few good candidates and they had to pick one so obviously the rest got rejected by the very decision to hire one. Companies hiring employees don't explicitly spend time thinking about the reasons why they might reject someone: they spend all their time trying to think which candidate stands out the best and could be that best choice for hiring.

</comment><comment><USER46> Headhunters are a pain in the ass but they are useful in that respect. You can provide feedback to the candidate indirectly without the feedback starting to be a negociation or pissing off the candidate. Internal candidates aren't that lucky.

Usually recruiters made their decision when walking out of the room on whether the candidate is suitable or not. This timeout process is a bit wasteful.

</comment><comment><USER47> My last employer didn't offer reasons quite simply because that would have been intractable with our candidate flow (legal issues aside).

</comment><comment><USER48> The timing on this posting is somewhat darkly amusing for me -- I was just rejected by Stripe on Wednesday. I fit the job posting perfectly, so I asked why, and the answers I received were almost identical to those highlighted in the posting. It's unfortunate what the bad eggs in the hiring process have done to make it effectively useless for everyone else.

<comment><USER49> Maybe the reason is just that they have found the candidate that fits the job even more perfectly.

<comment><USER48> In my experience I have usually been told if someone else beat me out (usually phrased as "We're moving forward with another candidate who is a better fit"). While it's possible, I don't think it was the case here.

I think it came down to the interview. I went into it expecting the questions to focus around one thing and ran into another, so I wasn't as smooth with the answers as I think was necessary. That was ultimately my fault, but I'd have felt more comfortable with some confirmation of it so I knew where to focus my improvement efforts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I wonder if having a mostly objective criteria would facilitate hiring and reduce frustrations

For example, give them a coding test (not fizzbuzz bs mind you), it might be just a multiple choice test, hence if they don't get approved this is an objective criteria used to turn them down

</comment><comment><USER51> It's rude for sure, but from what I've seen (And I don't necessarily agree), the company feels there's no upside. The relationship is already in a negative space and it's unlikely an explanation will make things better.

</comment><comment><USER52> I think asking a less litigious and confrontational question might be more productive such as "What do you think I could do/change/improve to make my next interview more successful?"

<comment><USER53> Unfortunately, this is a situation that requires zero-tolerance. The cost of a single candidate reinterpreting what you say and dragging you into court is too high to risk. Even if the case is complete BS, the cost of arguing over BS will make you regret every reasonable candidate that you tried to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I tried to implement at one place I was a Lead Dev. We wanted to let candidates allow to ask when we reject them why.

We got a string of really bad candidates, it really didn't make sense as a policy and was shot down.

</comment><comment><USER55> We don't accept "paranoid about litigation" as an excuse when, say, a kid gets expelled for bringing a butter knife to school.

<comment><USER56> Don't we? If a kid gets expelled for bringing a butter knife to school and the given excuse is "paranoid about the litigation", then the general result after all the uproar is that the kid is still expelled and the policies stay in place, so de facto we _do_ accept it and _do_ keep doing things because of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I get it, lawsuits. There's very little upside for the employer, the benefit would go to the candidate, and the liability is on the employer. I suppose one benefit for the employer might be that the candidate could improve, should there be an opportunity to interview again later.

It's a problem, though. I once did a 7 hour take home exam, didn't hear back for a month, and finally got the one line rejection listed in this article "we've decided not to move forward…" A month is too long to make someone wait regardless, but I really would have appreciated some technical feedback, because all I could do is wonder. The test was in Java, and I did use what I believe is a somewhat outdated way of using threads, but that's just a guess… I also interviewed at Google, and I understand that this "exam" (I think we should start calling it an entrance exam rather than an interviews) does result in actual, numerical scores that are currently sitting in a database somewhere at google, but I'm not allowed to know what they are. Again, I'd really like to know. Was I way off, or close? No idea.

I think this becomes especially toxic in the context of tech interviews, because they really do often amount to exams. I've spent some time reflecting on this, and I believe that exams usually come with a bill of rights for the examinee (or student). It's very unusual to take an entrance exam with no idea who will evaluate it, how it will evaluated, how you did, and why you did (or didn't) pass.

This "bill or rights" isn't an accident, it evolved, I believe, to counter balance what we demand of a student, and to provide safeguards against abusive and capricious behavior from institutions that act as gatekeepers, whether it's the bar, the medical or nursing boards, a committee deciding whether to award a masters degree, and so forth.

I understand why liability terrifies employers, and that there is no real benefit for them. But unfortunately, you do need to look at this from the perspective of the people who take the exam. We get all the negatives of high stakes and stressful exams, but without the considerations that offset the stress and safeguard against abuse. There may be reasons for it, but developers are the ones who don't really know why their performance at the whiteboard wasn't acceptable enough for a job offer, or what happened after they sent their take home exam to a recruiter where supposedly it was evaluated by a tech team.

In short, just because there are good reasons an employer wouldn't want to do this doesn't make it acceptable from the perspective of an applicant who has to essentially sit for these exams.

I consider this a very serious problem in the high tech industry, and is certainly something that deters talented people from entering or remaining in the field.

<comment><USER58> I did a phone screen, coding exercises, took two days off and flew into sfo for 2 days of interview at airbnb.

All I got was a 2 line email with "not a good fit" in it.

<comment><USER38> That would infuriate me.

<comment><USER58> I was humiliated by interviewers for not having a ivy league degree. I was really angry but I could do nothing but suck it up and move on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Lawsuits. They ruin everything.

</comment><comment><USER60> because there is literally no marginal benefit?

<comment><USER61> Maybe not 'literally', but the point is well taken. I got actionable feedback when I was applying as an intern at Microsoft, and I ended up working there a few years later. The feedback I got was crucial to my getting the job at MSFT (as well as to getting a different job before going to MSFT)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Quiz != Interview

Interviewer might have quizzed the candidate.

</comment><comment><USER63> Nothing unknown was said in this article.

<comment><USER64> [http://xkcd.com/1053/](http://xkcd.com/1053/)

<comment><USER63> While I agree about this - I never made fun out of anyone. I'm just saying it's common sense in corporate world not to reveal the info behind the rejection. It _should_ be common sense for others. But I'm in no way making fun out of anyone.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Quantum Order of Operations - <AUTHOR> My primary goal is to gain a better understanding of why people study the quantum field.<p>I am interested in understanding how quantum process happen. My understanding at this point is that they are simultaneous (not sure if correct but its definitely next to nothing). My math background is decent (aka I will try to understand any answer you throw at me). Links, books, comments, and anything else you have to offer is welcome. Thanks <comment><USER2> Not sure of what model you have in mind, but simultaneous doesn't seem appropriate: there is definitely a notion of _sequence_ of operations.

For example, applying the X operator followed by the Y operator on a quantum state |ѱ> can be written as:

        YX|ѱ>

(You don't need to know what X and Y are for the purpose of this example, but think matrix multiplication, X "touching" the state before Y.)

RE books, this is a good one: [http://www.michaelnielsen.org/qcqi/QINFO-book- nielsen-and-ch...](http://www.michaelnielsen.org/qcqi/QINFO-book-nielsen-and- chuang-toc-and-chapter1-nov00.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> _Quantum Computing since Democritus_ by Scott Aaronson is excellent. If you start reading his stuff you'll learn his mission in life is to teach people that quantum doesn't mean simultaneous. :-)</comment>


The Creator of the Egg That Broke Instagram - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/style/world-record-egg-instagram.html <comment><USER2> Fun fact: Long before the egg days there was a picture of a "sexy potato" making rounds on Facebook. It had over 1 million followers and copycats spawned new pages with a quarter million followers.</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg Believes Only in Mark Zuckerberg - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-believes-only-in-mark-zuckerberg/ <comment><USER2> I'm not a Zuckerberg fanboy, but this article seems to me to just be character assassination.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a truly terrible article.

</comment><comment><USER4> What has happened to Wired? Zuckerberg goes into the principles behind these kind of decisions in depth, in his own words, in a conversation with Yuval Noah Harari that for some reason nobody ever mentions: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boj9eD0Wug8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boj9eD0Wug8)

<comment><USER5> Lots of folks don't have time to watch 60-minute YouTube videos. Can you explain the principles he cites or give a time stamp?

<comment><USER4> It's difficult to summarise but the last 30 minutes is where they have a really good argument, starting about here: [https://youtu.be/Boj9eD0Wug8?t=3981](https://youtu.be/Boj9eD0Wug8?t=3981)

It gets quite philosophical, and hinges on whether people basically come to lose their own free will if embedded in a powerful algorithmic communication engine. They disagree with each other and there are definitely weak points in Zuckerberg's argument, but it is an earnest and principled-sounding defence. I think he loses the debate overall, but it's easier to attack his position than propose a coherent alternative.

There is also a part somewhere where Zuckerberg claims that when the platform takes actions such as marking a claim as untrue and linking to a source, that conspiracy theorists just use that to double-down and claim that the platform is trying to suppress their truth.

<comment><USER5> Isn't the fact that his stance is un-summarizable kind of the point?

If he had an actual position or policy, it wouldn't take 30 minutes of clawing at the edges to express it. This is the entire strategy. The invisible line can just be moved a little bit every time and we never have to cross it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem with centralized platforms that allow for mass censorship and ubiquitous surveillance is that they are never "on your side." There will always be pressure to bend the knee to the ruling party, and whether or not you agree with the politics of the ruling party at a given point in time is irrelevant. In a long term sense this is a slippery slope into fascism. Companies like Facebook are responsible to their shareholders, not users, and certainly not our vague notion of democracy.

<comment><USER7> Well said. And I think it's out of his control at this point. Not some mirror of his core beliefs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Zuckerberg also believes Facebook has privacy as a foundation.

[https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy- foc...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-focused- vision-for-social-networking/10156700570096634/)

</comment><comment><USER9> The premise of "power" and "domination" seems correct. Though there are other things he believes in:

\- Mark Zuckerberg believes/believed in China. He read Chinese president Xi Jinping's latest book and recommends it to his employees, learned Chinese, and asked president Xi for a baby name suggestion. [0]

\- Mark Zuckerberg believes in Judaism. He has grown "more religious" after becoming a father and as a result of the "challenges we've been through as a company." [1]

\- Mark Zuckerberg believes in Sheryl Sandberg, his Chief Operating Officer since 2008. Author Shoshana Zuboff called Sandberg "the Typhoid Mary of surveillance capitalism." [2]

[0] [https://qz.com/1115960/an-idiom-uttered-by-xi-jinping- perfec...](https://qz.com/1115960/an-idiom-uttered-by-xi-jinping-perfectly- describes-mark-zuckerbergs-frustrating-china-courtship/)

[1] [https://www.timesofisrael.com/facebooks-zuckerberg-says- hes-...](https://www.timesofisrael.com/facebooks-zuckerberg-says-hes-more- religious-since-becoming-a-dad/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheryl_Sandberg#Criticism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheryl_Sandberg#Criticism)

<comment><USER10> He asked Xi Jinping to be the godfather of his child despite not knowing Premier Xi nor having met him.

<comment><USER11> Wow, that's fascinating. That's a political move, like marriage used to be among royalty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The apple doesn't fall far from the Thiel tree.

<comment><USER12> Also, division and hate are good for the bottom line:

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270659/facebook- divisio...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/26/21270659/facebook-division- news-feed-algorithms)

</comment></comment><comment> throwaway-pol > Over the past two weeks these questions have taken on a new urgency as > Facebook employees have for the first time publicly voiced anger and > frustration with Zuckerberg's decision to protect Trump's calls for state > violence against those who are protesting racist police violence.

I interpreted the statement as describing people who are breaking into stores.

</comment><comment><USER13> I live in Europa, so really I don't get what's happening in the US right now, but this Wired article seems so partial and biased against Trump (and Zuckerberg).

It's a problem I see more and more in the media: taking side politically. Remember net neutrality? This was one one of the founding stone of Internet.

Peer pressure, pushing people and platforms, this is what looks like tyranny to me - not Trump nor Zuckerberg.

And of course I will get downvoted by these same people talking continuously about diversity of opinions and freedom of speech.

<comment><USER14> News sources have always been biased, though I agree it's gotten much worse under such a polarizing president. Net neutrality is an entirely different concept about internet service providers giving equal speeds to all websites, though, nothing to do with this.

<comment><USER13> Yes, net neutrality was for Internet providers to just be some kind of pipes that don't prioritize some websites over others. I think a platform like Facebook is a bit like that on a higher level. It's about information distribution, not about being an editor of contents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Siva Vaidhyanathan writes only about Mark Zuckerberg: [https://www.wired.com/author/siva- vaidhyanathan/](https://www.wired.com/author/siva-vaidhyanathan/)

<comment><USER5> Not only does your own link prove you are wrong, it's not relevant to the discussion.

<comment><USER15> Accuracy is not what I am going for.</comment></comment></comment>


Misrepresentation of Fuel Surcharges in Airline Price Advertising - <AUTHOR> http://www.benedelman.org/airfare-advertising/

<comment><USER2> Splintering the total cost into fare and various taxes, surcharges, and fees is likely an attempt to make direct price comparisons with competitors more difficult. I.e. advertising the base "fare" and only revealing the additional charges at purchase time. Wireless providers, cable/internet companies, etc. all do it too.

<comment><USER3> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusopoly)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just did some back of the napkin calculations on actual fuel costs for the reported BOS-LHR. I find the OPs description difficult to follow, but assuming a 777 from BOS-LHR

6000 gallons / hour of flight

$3 / gallon (currently $2.92)

550 passengers / flight

6 hours flight time

Results in an actual fuel cost of $193.36.

I'm quite surprised to see that fuel really is a significant price of the total cost of a flight. I always thought the Fuel Surcharge thing was B.S.

However, I disagree that it should be allowed to be separated from the cost of the flight. The airline isn't buying the fuel the day you buy your ticket or the day you fly, they're buying the fuel the day they schedule the flight via futures (or if they aren't ,they should be). It also isn't something out of the ordinary in the day to day business. Here in Australia their is 'public holiday surcharges' where you have to pay a surcharge on public holidays because businesses have to pay their employees more.

There should be requirements on what can be permitted to be placed as a 'surcharge'. As I see it, there is nothing stopping an airline from doing a complete 'a la carte' offering where every item of your ticket is broken out as a separate charge, but unfortunately, you don't have the option to opt-out of any of it.

<comment><USER5> Fuel _is_ the principle cost of aviation, and fuel prices have climbed markedly.

In looking at the "Boeing biofuel breakthrough" a couple of days ago, I happened to look at what actual fuel consumption for the US airline industry has been. Turns out that, although total _passenger miles_ is up since 2000, the fuel consumption for the commercial aviation industry (which may include cargo flights) peaked in 2000. The actual fuel usage for 2012 -52.3% of the 2000 FAA estimated consumption -- they'd predicted 3-4% annual growth over the next 10 years, it turned out to be a 15.9% reduction over the period.

Increased load factors (the seats filled on a flight -- increased from 70-83%) and reduced seat pitch (more seats, and passengers, per plane) seem to have staved off an actual reduction in the passenger-miles, but I strongly suspect that by plane-miles flown, we're down net.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1wo2hl/boeings_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1wo2hl/boeings_biofuel_breakthrough_less_than/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The DOT ruled[1] against AA and fined them a whole $60,000 after a complaint[2] from Edelman.

[1] [http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOT- OST-2013-0...](http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOT- OST-2013-0024-0032)

[2] [http://www.benedelman.org/airfare- advertising/americanairlin...](http://www.benedelman.org/airfare- advertising/americanairlines.html#complaint)

<comment><USER7> That's a whole 47 seconds revenue! I'm sure they'll be suitably chastened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I first came across this when I tried to redeem some of my 100k miles I accumulated on British Airways from business travel (at the time AA/BA didn't give AAdvantage miles for transatlantic flights on BA).

Almost any time I try to book an award ticket, I'm hit with, for example, an $800 ticket that "costs" $250 with $550 in fuel surcharges. This results in award tickets that cost 50,000 miles + $550. Definitely not worth it and not what I was expecting when I signed up.

<comment><USER9> You should consider filing a formal comment with DOT about your experience, and especially your surprise at the unexpected charges. This is straightforward using the Comment Now button on [http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOT- OST-2013-0...](http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOT- OST-2013-0025-0001) . DOT is currently evaluating my complaint against BA on this subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ultimately, calling it "tax" isn't really the problem.

Not including nationally standard costs in national advertising is the problem.</comment>


$.url() - A simple, lightweight url parser for jQuery - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/websanova/jquery-url#url

<comment><USER2> Just FYI, most, if not all, of this is built into javascript already, via the DOM. [http://www.joezimjs.com/javascript/the-lazy-mans-url- parsing...](http://www.joezimjs.com/javascript/the-lazy-mans-url-parsing/)

<comment><USER3> This was my initial reaction as well, but I appreciate the qs/hash sugaring:

        http://www.domain.com/path/index.html?query1=test&silly=willy#test=hash&chucky=cheese

        $.url('?');         // query1=test&silly=willy
        $.url('?silly');    // willy
        $.url('?poo');      // (an empty string)
        $.url('#');         // test=hash&chucky=cheese
        $.url('#chucky');   // cheese
        $.url('#poo');      // (an empty string)

<comment><USER4> I think that's a bit too much functionality to put down as "sugar".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Extracting Host, Subdomain and TLD from a url is hard. And they clearly oversimplified it.

      $.url('host', 'http://www.google.com.br');  // 'com.br'
      $.url('sub',  'http://www.google.com.br');  // 'www.google'
      $.url('tld',  'http://www.google.com.br');  // 'br'

It will work for simple cases where the TLD has only one field like (www.google.com) or (www.usa.gov), but it will fail for any other tld with country codes.

<comment><USER4> That is partially incorrect. There is no such thing as a TLD with more than one field. In "<http://www.google.com.br>, "br" is, in fact, the TLD, while "com" is the SLD[1]. So the 'tld' behavior is fine.

The "sub" behavior is awkward, however. It would make more sense to just have a numeric way of accessing the domain parts by index, just like they do with extracting the path elements.

As for "host", well that is just completely the wrong behavior. Since the parameter is "host", you would expect that to give the hostname. But the hostname corresponding to an internet URL is simply the fully qualified domain name. I have no idea how the behavior implemented would be useful in the first place, but it certainly shouldn't be called "host".

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_second- level_domai...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_second-level_domain)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like, but I'm curious why this is a jQuery plugin.

<comment><USER7> Looking at the source, it looks like there's only one line that calls jQuery on line 37 (and I don't think it should be using the short calling convention without a wrapper -- if you rename jQuery to '_' or something else it won't work):

        else if($.isNumeric(arg)

There's no native JavaScript equivalent to it if I recall correctly, but there's a bunch of alternatives to it as well.

It should be easy enough to extract out the logic and repackage it. Maybe I'll fork it tomorrow and do the changes myself.

<comment><USER8> jQuery simply does this:

      isNumeric: function( obj ) {
        return !isNaN( parseFloat(obj) ) && isFinite( obj );
      }

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> this has nothing to do with jquery, stop the madness! haha

[https://github.com/component/component/wiki/Building- better-...](https://github.com/component/component/wiki/Building-better- components)

<https://github.com/component/url>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well I really wasn't expecting this much feedback for this little library. I threw it up for kicks and went out for a movie, when I came back I was surprised to see all the interest. It's just a simple parser I wrote for my projects, so it doesn't get too crazy with exact definitions of "tld" and support for IPv4/IPv6 addresses as mentioned in the comments. Might be better to create a secondary more heavyweight version for things like that.

Anyway, I've fixed/updated a bunch of things from the comments, if anyone finds any other bugs or missing features probably best to leave me an issue on the github project page here: <https://github.com/websanova/js-url/issues>.

The project has also been un-jquery-ified and renamed to js-url (thanks to Jay Adkisson : <https://github.com/jayferd>)

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER10> Parsing url is difficult and prone to errors. How $.url() compares to furl? There are two furl(s) on github:

(1) <https://github.com/stricaud/furl>

and

(2) <https://github.com/gruns/furl>

furl(1) seems to handle a lot of edge cases when the URL is containing an IPv4/IPv6 address or when the URL is partial (e.g. without the protocol). furl(1) aims is to be fast. furl(2) seems to be more flexible and used for inline modification of the URL.

<comment><USER11> I actually renamed the furl project into faup, for 'Finally An Url Parser' ;-) That should solve the problem. API and command line tool will follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice little utility, just a couple of issues that should be easy to fix:

\- Breaks for protocols other than http/https, including protocol-relative urls.

\- Breaks query string values that contain '='.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice. And prezjordan has a good question. Why is it a jquery plugin?

</comment><comment><USER14> As others have suggested, jQuery is overkill for this.

The best lightweight js library I've found/used in the past is parseUri:

<http://blog.stevenlevithan.com/archives/parseuri>

Obviously, if you only need to analyze the current URL, you can use window/document.location, but there are times when you want to parse a URI for a page you aren't on. For instance, if you are analyzing har data, and want to break URI "components" into columns so they are sortable.

<comment><USER15> I have a hard time seeing why, these days, an extra 1.2k for something that makes a task simpler and more consistent is ever "overkill".

<comment><USER16> jQuery is not 1.2k.

And this library doesn't have a strong reason to tie itself to jQuery. It doesn't need jQuery's DOM operation or AJAX. It's like making a program depending on third party library without actually using any of the feature.

<comment><USER17> Or rather it's using the jquery namespace for a utility function much like many of those provided by jquery, like isnuneric for example.

<comment><USER16> It uses just one function from jQuery, `isNumeric`, which is a function that is a one liner.

And if you follow the project again, you will see that it has become a regular non-jQuery library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It looks like this has been moved and is no longer a jQuery plugin, which is awesome. It's now, however, creating a global variable named `url` which is dangerous to say the least.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have OCD about code cleanliness... No semicolon at the end of line 26? Please excuse me as I proceed to gag.

But me being a douche aside, I'm not sure why you needed to extend from/bake into jQuery for this.

</comment><comment><USER20> If the url doesn't contain the required component, it will throw errors. Why not return an empty string like urlparse does?

</comment><comment><USER21> How it compares against <http://code.google.com/p/jsuri/> ?

<comment><USER22> I would be interested too to see a comparison with jsuri. I was about to say that jsuri is not maintained anymore but looking closer on <http://code.google.com/p/jsuri/> I saw that now the project is active on github: <https://github.com/derek-watson/jsUri> with the latest version being 1.2.2

<comment><USER23> There's also an attempt I made, <https://github.com/theozaurus/jsurlify> which tries to keep the usage as terse as possible. It would be great to see what strengths / weaknesses all these different libraries have and try to join efforts where sensible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Thanks for having the link go directly to examples.

</comment><comment><USER25> Good job. JavaScript has needed something like this for a while. I'm still kind of confused as to why they don't have good native support for URL parsing.

<comment><USER26> to quote my favorite seen from the lion king reference: "<http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000591/quotes> "look harder". You can parse URL's in JavaScript using window.location or anchor.href, both provide solutions for parsing URL's... someone else from this thread referenced: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6168260/how-to-parse-a- ur...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6168260/how-to-parse-a- url/6168370#6168370) (above i believe)...

<comment><USER15> .. and I still have to roll my own library or inline code for parsing apart GET params. No thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


It's going to be a bad year for the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/will-the-iphone-7-be-worth-the-upgrade-2016-7 <comment><USER2> This matches the anecdata I have collected. So yeah, I'm not an industry analyst at all, not even close. But this article matches what I've seen:

\- iPhone 6, 6+, 6S are popular

\- iPhone 7, 7+, 7 Pro looks like they will be meh, not much of an upgrade

\- Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge is outselling iPhone 6S in the US [1]

\- The 2017 iPhone (10th year anniversary iPhone) will have the wall-to-wall display like the S7 Edge and might even do away with the home button (put the fingerprint sensor right into the touchscreen). Apple is putting out the iPhone 7 as a meh upgrade so that there will be pent-up demand for the 2017 iPhone.

\- Google will probably release a phone built entirely in-house to compete with Apple

tl;dr Apple plans to have a meh 2016, then come back really strong in 2017

[1] The article links to this as a source: [http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/News/Apple-versus- Sam...](http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/News/Apple-versus-Samsung-is- so-over)</comment>


MozRepl lets you program Firefox from the inside - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.github.com/bard/mozrepl <comment><USER2> Emacs users may wish to check out this hack (reload browser via MozRepl on save): <http://hyperstruct.net/projects/mozrepl/emacs-integration>

It's quite neat, but very easy to get confused: if you switch to a different tab to read documentation for example, then make an edit and save, it will try and load into the new tab (usually with strange results!)

</comment><comment><USER3> This idea isn't new. I used something just like this (but more ghetto) whenever I worked on Firefox extensions. It was called the Extension Developer Extension:

<http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/extensiondev/>

It had other features, but the REPL was the most important to me. This looks much nicer though.

<comment><USER4> > This idea isn't new

In fact I would say it's a kind of a pattern: implementing REPLs for systems that weren't made with REPLs in mind.

(That doesn't say anything about the coolness of this hack though, one way or the other :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure ChromeBug (<http://getfirebug.com/releases/#chromebug>) lets you do this, though it has some trade-offs.

On one hand, it's built on top of Firebug; this adds a lot of power (chrome inspection, javascript debugging/breakpoints in the chrome).

On the other, it's alpha, and not the focus of development (as far as I can tell)--it hasn't had a new release in some time.

</comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.croczilla.com/bits_and_pieces/jssh/>

Edit: Just realised that this is pure javascript, making it a lot easier to deploy than jssh, and also a lot more extensible. That is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER7> Any way to save changes to the browser?</comment>


Update: reporter caught in mortgage bubble didn't mention previous bankruptcies - <AUTHOR> http://kottke.org/09/05/economics-reporter-gets-caught-in-mortgage-bubble <comment><USER2> Edmund Andrews responded to this and claimed that the largest of the BK's was due to his wife's ex-husband's failure to file tax returns for 5 years. McArdle points out that you can't simply discharge IRS debts in a normal bankruptcy. That's two strikes now on Andrews, who continues to collect plaudits from the journo elites for his courage while evading simple questions about his story.

</comment><comment><USER3> Link to the original reporting on this story.

[http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/05/the_roa...](http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/05/the_road_to_bankruptcy.php)

<comment><USER4> [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2009/05/ed- andrews-...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2009/05/ed-andrews- responds-to-critici.html)

Original NYT author responding to recent revelations.

<comment><USER5> And McCardle responding to that:

[http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/05/edmund_...](http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/05/edmund_andrews_has_responded_t.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always been told that before you marry someone you should discuss money.

Whether that be how much credit card debt and student loans they have outstanding, how much money they have saved up, or whether they have declared bankruptcy it is important to know the financial history of someone you are legally tied to.

<comment><AUTHOR> I shared a bank account with Abby before getting married. Having intertwined finances is actually good practive. It's also a dead simple way to split things down the middle. Get a join account, each put in $X/mo., and don't worry about having to split anything after that. Just pay with the joint account. If someone makes Y times more, just put in Y*$X, if you're into punishing success :)

<comment><USER7> In your plan, do you each have individual accounts in addition to the shared account?

We sort of go the opposite route, with individual accounts for discretionary spending, and a separate account for paying the fixed costs, including the allowances to discretionary spending. We found that spending from a shared account required excessive coordination. It was easier for us to separate the responsibilities and manage our own budgets, like departments in a corporation.

<comment><AUTHOR> We lived together, making a lot of the fixed costs shared. We also had individual accounts, but were students, making discretionary income smaller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Aha. This changes the perspective of that NYT article completely, because the NYT article does mention (but not blame) the spending habits of the wife breaking the budget.

<comment><USER9> Actually, this was one of the main points I took away from that article -- even if you make good financial decisions, your partner can ruin you. Apparently that is true :)</comment></comment>


From Viral Video to Billboard 100 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/business/media/06tune.html?pagewanted=print

<comment><AUTHOR> These guys (and gal) are the real deal. Talented, creative and can execute with limited resources. What I find interesting is that they know the value of remix culture.

"Some of the group's online traction stems from the way they turn their songs into viral video franchises by posting the chords and lyrics and encouraging others to create their own versions of the songs..."

By giving their fans more they broaden the audience and magnify their own offerings. Can't wait for the rest of the world to catch up.</comment>