Ask HN: What's likely to suck in any development job? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Also, every tech stack sucks, and if your tech stack doesn't suck, either you haven't worked with it long enough to get disillusioned or you're not doing anything particularly hard.

The grizzled old guys who say that something "doesn't suck" and mean it as high praise aren't just understated cynics; if anything, they're getting swept up in a wave of irrational exuberance.

Edit: Also, there are never enough conference rooms.

<comment><USER3> Ha, I don't even think about tech stacks sucking, I just deal with their suckage as part of the job. If I had the time to make my own stack I would, and it would be amazing initially but probably suck a year or two into it.

Kudos to the sucky stacks that managed to stick around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You will get excited by some new technology, but eventually burn yourself out on programming, from doing it all day, to the point of never getting to use that new exciting technology for anything personal.

It is very hard to break this cycle, but not impossible.

</comment><comment><USER5> There will always be ugly legacy code. There will always be competing interests between departments / stakeholders, etc (Development vs Marketing vs Sales vs Executive). There will always be some shitty person that makes your life difficult.

</comment><comment><USER6> Tech debt. You'll never have time to pay it all down and even when you do, it starts accruing again quickly. If you can't live with a certain baseline level of imperfection, you may want to look for another career.

<comment><USER7> Tech debt is like real debt. In business it should be leveraged for growth, but beware of interest payments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Everybody, including yourself, will always underestimate the complexity of your tasks.

<comment><USER9> The worst is when you're in a meeting with a non-technical manager and another developer is like "this task is trivial, I could do it in X hours".

It's becomes like a weird intimidation thing where people don't want to argue back because non-technical managers might think you're just slow at development or don't know what you're doing.

<comment><USER10> Touche. Don't want to lose the reverse auction!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Being too good. There's nothing worse than being an amazing developer, with bosses without clear visions of what to build.

Every project you're assigned takes you 3 days instead of the slotted 3 weeks and you start getting board out of your mind.

Eventually, you start making silly and fun side projects to alleviate the boredom. Eventually your silly side projec turns into a real product, and maybe you have a customer or two.

Maybe you quit your job to jump right into it. Maybe it succeeds or fails.

The moral of the story: a boring job is the worst but can also be the best.

</comment><comment><USER11> Some projects never ends. i can't work on long projects i sort of lose interest after some time.

<comment><USER12> Contracting is a good option for this. You move around every 6 months or so which means you don't really spend enough time to get burned out by any single project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >> 80% of programming jobs will have you work on something that is not meaningful to you personally or address big problems like climate change, corruption or other significant miseries that plague the world.

(It's of course possible to get a job that doesn't have this problem!)

<comment><USER3> Sometimes working on the smaller problems can be more rewarding than being a drop in the bucket for bigger problems.

<comment><USER13> Yes, hence the "or" :)

<comment><USER3> Your "or" referred to significant maladies. By smaller projects, I'm referring to something smaller than that.

Creating a government website as a contractor, allowing folks to communicate across great distances, programming accounting software for a hospital, building test hardware for a racecar... none of these will save the world, but there is plenty of meaning in each, depending on the person.

<comment><USER14> Which would clearly fit the part before the or: "meaningful to you personally"?

<comment><USER3> Fair, my point was only that there are ways of being gratified without succumbing to the cliche of changing the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In my experience: issue management, because every company has required JIRA for some strange reason.

<comment><USER12> I never really get the hate for JIRA.

When configured & used properly, it's a lovely tool. When interviewing with companies, them using JIRA is a huge plus for me personally and I would definitely rank them higher than those using something else.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. Admittedly I've only used JIRA at a couple of smaller places with small teams, and perhaps it fails if you have massive dev teams, but so far it's been pretty great.

<comment><USER6> Every other tool I've seen used would be an even bigger clusterfuck with massive dev teams. I can't even start to imagine trying to manage tasks for 500 people in Trello or Asana or that rinky dink tool that I can't remember what it was called. None of them have enough structure to keep track of the work of 5 people, let alone 100 times that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you work at my employer, having to write secure code seems to be the bane of these developers existence.

</comment><comment><USER8> People much less smart than you will manage your project and will try to tell you what to do.

</comment><comment><USER18> I would say the tech envy and the closely related "if we use this new technology X we will solve all our problems" instead of actually doing the hard work to be able.

</comment><comment><USER19> Meetings, bosses, limited independence, severe time-drain.

The tech is always behind, what should take 1 minutes will take two days.

</comment><comment><USER7> Legacy code and legacy architecture :)</comment>


Last major primeval forest in Europe on 'brink of collapse' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/23/worst-nightmare-europes-last-primeval-forest-brink-collapse-logging <comment><USER2> How come the other countries were allowed to benefit from logging and destroying their own primeval forests, but because Poland was the last one they're being called out? If the UN or EU were serious about this, they'd offer to buy out the forest at whatever the market rate is for this wood, and Poland would use that money the retrain the forest workers.

<comment><USER3> While I understand what you are aiming at, I don't think it is that simple. Should someone pay me for not having slaves and not being able to profit from exploiting them because I am a century or two late and missed the good old time when it was not yet an unacceptable practice?

<comment><USER4> If you legally acquired them, then yes. The British experience ending slavery was far more humane than the US one.

<comment><USER5> You can't own human beings, because it violates their fundamental rights. This was true back when slavery was "legal". The Nazis could pass a law saying that the Holocaust was legal, but the rest of the world felt free to disregard that law, and put the Nazis on trial. Some laws are not legal, that is the whole entire point of the West's 2,400 year old liberal tradition. Likewise, some claims of ownership are not legal, and not binding. You can pay good money for a slave, but you still don't own the slave, because no law can make it legal to own another human being. And this was true for all of the thousands of years that slavery was legal: none of those laws were ever legitimate, and none of those ownership claims were ever legitimate.

<comment><USER6> > You can't own human beings, because it violates their fundamental rights. > This was true back when slavery was "legal".

There's no such thing as fundamental rights. Those were won by sweat and blood.

Up until the enlightenment and humanist eras there was not even the idea that such a thing as rights even exists. Some inkling of rights existed for royalty in the codes of conduct and such things, but they were freedoms given by right of birth and power of ancestor's sword.

For peasants, no such luck. They were property even though they weren't slaves per se.

<comment><USER5> Until the Arabs came up with the concept of zero, no human had any idea about zero, nor did mathematicians use the zero. Nevertheless, zero has always existed. Just because humans didn't know about it doesn't mean zero didn't matter. Likewise, all human beings have always had fundamental rights, and that was true during the era when people did not spend much time talking about rights. You assume this when you write "Those were won by sweat and blood." The point is, why did people fight for them? Why did people think they had any right to fight for them?

More so, you are wrong that the discussion of rights has only happened in the modern era. Elaine Pagels, a historian of early Christianity, has studied why women and slaves were often the strongest supporters of early Christianity -- part of the answer is the Christian church fought for their rights. Pagels offers, as an example, a priest in North Africa who felt that slave owners should be punished if they raped their slaves. At the time, the idea was counter to Roman law, but of course the millions of slaves in the Empire were supportive of such ideas.

<comment><USER7> People fought and bled and died for the right to own slaves too.

The point is that there's no such thing as a universal right. There are only rights some individual believes __should be __universal rights. If enough individuals band together, they can get those rights enshrined by whatever authority has the ability to grant and recognize rights for those people, but as long as that authority refuses them, they don 't have that right. They just __should __have that right, according to you or me or whoever.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but they lost because ultimately they couldn't explain why one person should own slaves and another should be enslaved, other than luck. Rights are indeed what people assert, but to argue they have no conceptual existence is to confuse them with power relations.

<comment><USER7> No, they lost because their military power wasn't sufficient to impose their view of "rights" onto those they were fighting.

Again, we all likely agree that there is a _moral_ imperative in play here that slavery should not be tolerated. And had the South won, I'm sure the guy being whipped against a post would be super comforted by us sitting around talking about his universal human rights. He could think about them to take his mind off the lashings.

I'm not arguing that rights have no conceptual existence. I'm arguing that conceptual existence isn't the existence that really matters. It's all lovely for me to say that anyone has the right to draw whatever cartoons they want, but there are 30 million people in Saudi Arabia who would rightly call me an idiot. The _actual_ existence of the right is not some airy concept that I just get to define because it pleases me. It's a very practical thing that affects people's daily lives, and I don't get to declare otherwise just because it suits me.

<comment><USER8> That's certainly true once you get to the kinetic stage of war with people actually battling, but I'd back up and look at the political breakdowns that led to that outcome. It does feel like we basically agree though, and are just describing the same thing from somewhat different perspectives, so I don't want to be pedantic about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Belovezhskaya Pushcha is one of the oldest official natural reserves in Europe. I can't give the sources right now but it was already protected area 600 hundred years ago. It had a special status since the early times of Russian Empire. Even Nazi Germany during its invasion to USSR recognized the importance of the forest and didn't sent the army through it and kept it intact. Also it is a home to bisons which were extinct in North America and recently some animals were transfered from it for repopulation.

<comment><USER10> Belovezhskaya Pushcha - are you referring to the Belorussian part? Nazi Germans were cutting the forest quite happily, USSR did some heavy damages by draining whatever they could and European bison is quite different than the American one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how HN will explain this [1]:

"In western North America, the current outbreak of the mountain pine beetle and its microbial associates has destroyed wide areas of lodgepole pine forest, including more than 16 million of the 55 million hectares of forest in British Columbia. The current outbreak in the Rocky Mountain National Park began in 1996 and has caused the destruction of millions of acres of ponderosa and lodgepole pine trees. According to an annual assessment by the state's forest service, 264,000 acres of trees in Colorado were infested by the mountain pine beetle at the beginning of 2013. This was much smaller than the 1.15 million acres that were affected in 2008 because the beetle has already killed off most of the vulnerable trees"

Of course something similar cannot happen in Poland.

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

<comment><USER12> What, exactly, are you insinuating? That parasites are driving Poles to cut down trees?

If so, where's the evidence that this is the case?

<comment><USER13> That's what the Ministry of Environment is claiming. This does not automatically make it true, but at least for me, it is a more reputable source than Guardian and European Commission which both attacked Polish government on numerous other occasions.

<comment><USER12> >which both attacked Polish government on numerous other occasions.

 _Prima facie_ , this does not reduce their credibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maciej Cegłowski wrote an essay about his trip to Białowieża forest some number of years ago. Like everything on his site, it's worth reading.

[http://www.idlewords.com/2012/02/bia%C5%82owie%C5%BCa_forest...](http://www.idlewords.com/2012/02/bia%C5%82owie%C5%BCa_forest.htm)

<comment><USER15> Thank you for that link. Well worth reading as it is both funny and informative:

       The principal large mammals in Białowieża are
       the bison, moose, wolf, boar, bobcat, and graduate
       student. The last spends a lengthy juvenile period
       studying forest theory in Western Europe before
       migrating in to do field work and possibly mate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Poland used to have reasonable government. Now we have Trump-lite version.

Just one example environment minister: Jan Szyszko

1\. Approves logging near national park on massive scale.

2\. Lax regulation for cutting down trees everywhere.

3\. Claims it is highly uncertain if global warming is due to human activity.

4\. Hunter, shoot to animals a lot while being environment minister.

5\. Works hard to protect coal mine industry.

<comment><USER17> As an aside, some hunters work to preserve the natural area, viewing hunting and nature appreciation as something both enjoyable and to be passed down to future generations.

For example, Ducks Unlimited [http://www.ducks.org/](http://www.ducks.org/) .

<comment><USER18> Since we've eliminated so many predators, hunting is necessary to control populations. I would however prefer it if we reintroduced natural predators instead.

<comment><USER19> I saw a pretty cool documentary on how reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone changed the ecosystem for the better.

Not the one I saw but very similar: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q)

More serious article:

[http://www.yellowstonepark.com/wolf-reintroduction- changes-e...](http://www.yellowstonepark.com/wolf-reintroduction-changes- ecosystem/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is basically the same process as the logging of the rainforest; it's nominally protected, but a combination of poverty, greed and weak law enforcement means the protection is ineffective.

<comment><USER21> The difference here is that this logging is state-sanctioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This title is false and clickbaity. Puszcza Białowieska is definitely not on "brink of collapse". Please take a look at [http://www.lasy.gov.pl/information/all-about-bialowieza- fore...](http://www.lasy.gov.pl/information/all-about-bialowieza- forest/10-facts-about-the-bialowieza-primeval-forest).

</comment><comment><USER23> Trees grow back, and so do forests. Let's focus on the plasticization of the oceans instead of the trees which grow in the ground. The Earth is mostly ocean and it's actually a good thing to cut down forests, it creates new opportunities for new organisms to move in and pioneer the land. North Carolina used to be a large portion of prairie called Piedmont. But the dense farming of the NC piedmont resulted in the new growth forests springing up when people moved westward and farms died. Forests grow so quickly we forget that "old growth" is like a hundred year old tree. Deforestation and reforestation is a natural cycle and it's actually not as bad as say a giant miasma of microplastic or a giant toxic algae bloom caused by agricultural run off.

<comment><USER24> You work for Ikea? The problem is that nobody is planting them back.

<comment><USER25> It isn't necessarily required to plant trees back. It depends on the type of management and cutting being done.

One strategy is to remove the highest value trees from time to time, as they tend to be larger and removing them creates space for smaller trees to grow larger. Such harvests will also remove smaller trees that are unlikely to increase in value (often sold as paper pulp or wood chips, not necessarily discarded). This creates space for new trees to grow.

At the extreme you do have companies cutting down everything and using herbicide cocktails to prepare the ground for planting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why don't they put a lot of sunlight-powered cameras around the forest to find people coming and going?

</comment><comment><USER27> good luck Polish government for destroying one if the three reasons I am considering visit of Poland (other two would be sand dunes on the beach and Osviecim)

<comment><USER28> I spent two weeks in Poland last summer. Might I recommend Zakopane, hell, the entire Tatra Mountains region while we're at it? Absolutely spectacular.

<comment><USER27> I heard they are less touristy on Slovak side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems clickbaity and inaccurate. List of many other "primeval" forests in Europe: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_old- growth_forests#Eur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_old- growth_forests#Eurasia)

<comment><USER30> The Hacker News headline is misleading. The article calls it the "last major primeval forest in Europe" which is more accurate. Białowieża forest is around 40 000 hectares, while very few of the other ones left is bigger than 2000 hectares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> We should grow hemp all over the planet, industrial scale, low THC grade of course. From space we can look at our blue and green hemp planet.

<comment><USER32> I've been casually investigating hemp as a carbon fixer, as a hobby. I think paired with bamboo it could provide both sustainable materials for much of life's needs along with a terrific ability to fix atmospheric carbon. If nothing else the plant material can be bio-charred upon post-harvest and processing.

Also been looking at bamboo and hemp for things like water/soil/air purification, though it's all very casual.

<comment><USER31> We can also use hemp for nutrition, clothing, building materials, paper among many other things. Yes, grow this plant on an industrial scale all over the planet.</comment></comment></comment>


N95 Respirator vs. Medical Masks for Preventing Influenza Among Health Personnel - <AUTHOR> https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2749214 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm not posting this study because I find it immensely useful, but because I feel confident someone else will post it soon enough and it deserves caveating:

1\. Health care staff using N95s self report lower compliance. Which of course they do, because N95 is uncomfortable (I expect many incoming posts about how N95s are dandy.)

2\. N95s only work when appropriately fit. They are rarely that. So where this trial fails to find superiority, it's worth noting that what it shows is "N95s as often used - that is, incorrectly - are no better than surgical masks." Which, sure, yes, could've told you that.</comment>


JSXM, a model-based testing tool #testing #java #eclipse - <AUTHOR> http://www.jsxm.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> JSXM is a model-based testing tool. The tool is implemented in Java and allows the automated generation of test cases based on a model of the software to be tested. The model is expressed as a Stream X-machine (SXM). With the help of JSXM the specifed model can be used for: Model Animation, Test Generation and Test Transformation.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> JSXM serves as an Eclipse plug-in. It is a MBT coming from the academia. A JSXM visual editor is planned to be released in few months too.</comment>


Ask HN: Friday Review - Ebay Sniper - PleaseSnipe.com - <AUTHOR> http://PleaseSnipe.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This started out as a fun proof-of-concept because all of the other ebay snipers either weren't free or placed your bid with ridiculous time windows (~1 min).

I think the major hurdle is going to be getting people to feel comfortable handing over their Ebay username and password so the system can place the bid on their behalf, any suggestions on that part are welcome.

</comment><comment><USER2> I thought ebay had a system to bid up to your maximum amount anyway while placing minimum bid interims? Doesn't that make this obsolete?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a lot of "gaming the system" that happens on ebay (typically to the disadvantage of the buyer), but this site has a lot of reasons to snipe as opposed to just using ebay's proxy bidding.

<http://www.moyen.org/snipe/why.html></comment></comment>


Samsung Announces Android-powered Tablet - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/16/live-blog-samsung-announces-their-their-latest-android-powered-device-in-nyc/

<comment><USER2> I'm really curious to see whether these smaller 7-8 inch tablets end up being closer to the sweet-spot than the iPad-sized 10-12 inch screens. Is the lighter, one-hand form factor more mobile and appealing? Or is it just a pain not to have the bigger screen on the device?

<comment><USER3> I'm with you here, I can't see why you would want a 7" tablet if you already have a 4 or 5" phone...

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, you could phrase it as why would you want a 5" phone, when you can have a 7" tablet that makes calls?

Unfortunately it is being reported that the US carriers are blocking this ability. Might explain why you can't make phone calls with the iPad as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it will be beneficial for most people to wait for 3.0-based tabs, which should also ship with such auspicious future features as Google Music & Google Me (presuming they're working on an Android app to display/interact with the activity stream). Apps will also be better prepared to support higher resolutions and I suspect we'll start seeing different form factor tabs... with dual-core CPUs, more accessories (BT keyboard, for one), and an even better UX.

</comment><comment><USER6> It'll be interesting to see if these catch on or go the way of so many "iPod killers". The iPad depends more on 3rd-party apps than a phone, and apps have been a weak point for Android so far. They'll also have to compete without the huge marketing campaigns funded by the telcos that gave Android phones traction.

</comment><comment><USER7> In using the iPad I do constantly feel the lack of Flash. It's my biggest gripe about it. I'm not sure this device will stack up, but Flash is a big competitive edge.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is Samsung Bada dead? Or are they just using Android until they get their own OS up to task?

</comment><comment><USER9> With Google saying Android not quite ready for tablet purposes (<http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20016085-260.html>) and Samsung not _actually_ announced the tablet, this is such an empty "article", except for the tornado warning bit (I'm currently away from the city so that was interesting).

<comment><USER10> You say Samsung did not announce the tablet in comments about the article which was liveblogging of the announcement? And how come that samsung.com has promotional videos on the first page, if they did not announce anything?

BTW, I find it interesting how little interaction is shown in those videos. Sliding the stocks, typing in some comment, and that's about it. I guess work is not yet done in UI department there…

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good to know there's a wifi only version.

</comment><comment><USER12> If they price the wifi version at $300 it will be hugely popular. If they price it higher I think people will likely just spend the extra money to get an iPad. It has to be cheaper than an iPad since it's smaller in my opinion.

<comment><USER13> They are being sold in Germany for over 1000 euros, there is not way they will be this cheap.

They are aiming for the subsidized market, where it only costs $100, but you pay $50 for 2 years.

If you are one of those people who ignore the delayed cost, then this is a great deal for you.

<comment><USER4> How can they subsidize the Wifi-only version they just announced?</comment></comment></comment>


Federal workers earning $150,000 or more has risen tenfold in past five years - <AUTHOR> http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/11/13/2010-11-13_the_fat_of_the_land.html

<comment><USER2> They should really compare industry to industry to see if the pay with benefits are similar.

For example, with all these new regulations on the financial industry, how are you going to attract financial professionals to government service to enforce these regulations. If they're making 5 figures in government while their classmates are making 6 or 7 figures in the private sector, would it be really surprising if we can't find enough smart and savvy financial cops?

</comment><comment><USER3> Heavily slanted. Some points from the source article:

"workers earning $150,000 or more make up 3.9% of the workforce" (the original headline was "More federal workers' pay" which paints a different mental picture).

"The biggest pay hikes have gone to employees who have been with the government for 15 to 24 years"

"Physicians rewarded. Medical doctors at veterans hospitals, prisons and elsewhere earn an average of $179,500"

IT in particular is poorly compensated when compared to the private sector. In fact the government would be better off hiring large numbers at private sector-level salaries instead of outsourcing to private contractors at huge markups (Robert Gates made the same point with regard to defense contracting).

But the forces aligned against "stunning" federal pay aren't likely to oppose continued outsourcing.

They're also carefully carving the pie to exclude federal defense workers:

"Freeze federal salaries for three years, with the exception of defense paychecks."

</comment><comment><USER4> It sounds ridiculous on the surface, but at least consider cost of living. You can't compare salaries without knowing where the people are. Assuming they are mostly in DC, how expensive is that compared to other parts of the country?

<comment><USER3> Ridiculously expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think we need to chop government worker pay severely, but I don't like the misleading way this headline frames the problem. That is -- I think others may correctly point out that this is a very odd metric to quote, and hence people must need to fudge the numbers to argue the case. The more accurate is what Rand Paul just said -- federal total compensation averages $120k vs. $60k for private sector. The only subtlety there is total compensation including benefits vs. salary.

The problem with those making more than X has increased by Y is that you can always generate extreme numbers by choosing X appropriately. Imagine there was a large subset of our all-knowing overlords making $145k five years ago. Maybe this was the cap for some particular level in the hierarchy. Now assume they got a 5% raise. Bam, huge increase in number of feds making over $150k. True, but misleading.

If you want subtlety, there are studies out there comparing apples to apples (since federal employees are skewed towards professionals) and still finds massive pay differences.</comment>


Why People with Brain Implants Are Afraid to Go Through Automatic Doors - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/why-people-with-brain-implants-are-afraid-to-go-through-1796452196 <comment><USER2> Despite the title, automatic doors seem to have nothing to do with it:

 _> He thinks the theft-prevention system interfered with his implant and turned it off._

This makes far more sense as a possible cause of interference than a motion detector and motor.

<comment><USER3> The theft prevention systems use inductive power to activate the security tags. If this matches the resonant frequency of an implant you could be in trouble.

<comment><USER2> Right, which is precisely why automatic doors are completely irrelevant.

On a related note, here's an interesting and informative video from Applied Science on how these tags work: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAm7qAKAXwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAm7qAKAXwI)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, automatic doors are generally infra-red or ultrasonic though some of them can spew out a bunch of nasty EMF.

Cable tracing probes are not only good at picking up signals from the trace transmitter, they also amplify other types of EMF. You can hear a ton of noise from a keyboard as it goes through the scan loops. LCDs squeal at their refresh frequency. Automatic door detectors make a ton of noise too.

I'm not sure how close you'd have to be to the detector you'd have to be, but if the resonant frequency matched and you're tall enough to nearly make contact maybe it's a factor here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article is about someone whose brain implant failed, and concludes that the problem was caused by electromagnetic interference. But this is pure guesswork; no measurements were taken, no tests were performed and no electrical engineers were consulted.

<comment><USER5> "Olhoeft is a retired professor of geophysics in Colorado who taught courses on electromagnetism, so with those two details, it wasn't hard for him to figure out what had probably gone wrong. His implant, he says, operated at the same electromagnetic frequency as Best Buy's theft detection system, and the two signals interfered with each other."

"To test such situations, he uses a detector that tells him the frequency of things like security systems to make sure they're operating on a different frequency than his device. If the frequency is a match, he asks to go around."

Also, the statistical power of these results are quite strong. (Sometimes I think people screw up in teaching the "scientific method" as the traditional presentation tends to assume that you are dealing with some effect where you don't have a lot of statistical power, so people get this idea that you _must_ have massive samples and do complicated statistics. This is not true. There are time you are justified in drawing strong conclusions from very small sets of data, because the statistical power is sufficient to justify it. You know this, because _you do it all the time_.)

And finally, this absolutely conforms with all current understandings of mainstream science and engineering. Massive amounts of engineering effort in the radio world are spent preventing, dealing with, and in some military type applications, causing radio interference. We're not talking about claims that UFOs are giving this guy Parkinson's, we're talking about perfectly sensible straightforward theories that were by _far_ the dominant theory that an informed person would think of even before the overwhelming evidence that it is EM based.

<comment><USER6> Sample size is too small and correlation does not equal causation are the worst. Teachers did a great job teaching those things, but sometimes correlation does equal causation or at the very least is interesting enough to warrant a closer look rather than to be dismissed so easily. At the same time, a sample size of one is good enough to prove something in a scientific way. If I claim to know the lottery numbers, I can prove it by winning the next lottery. In doing so I beat 1 to 5 million odds, which are greater than the 1 in twenty that most studies require.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Encryption was mentioned as a possible fix, which made me go WTF.

Am I misunderstanding this, or do these devices not do even the most rudimentary false-input rejection? EMI is one thing, but it sounds more like their radio is accepting random noise as valid commands.

<comment><USER8> Uh. I thought it was all about parasitic currents. Strong enough EM fields induce those in the wires, brain gets stimulation and goes into seizure, this sort of stuff.

(Neighbor comment[1] suggests those devices don't have anything like firmware upgrades, so don't see why they need an actual receiver)

___

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14712193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14712193)

<comment><USER7> That would be the obvious interpretation, yes. Induced currents from EMI can be dangerous, and implants don't necessarily have the luxury of shielding, but if that _was_ why... then how would encryption help?

I'll fully admit I'm speculating. It just seems odd.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Serious question: Could a user of such a device, wear some sort of protective hat for situations like this? Since you can't really fully predict where interference can occur, and otherwise avoiding it could cause you not to be able to have anything resembling a normal life.

<comment><USER10> I'm probably on a list now: [https://www.amazon.com/Shielded-Protection- against-Radio-Fre...](https://www.amazon.com/Shielded-Protection-against- Radio-Frequency-Radiation/dp/B005I4D5GO)

<comment><USER11> that looks like a nice way to concentrate all the rf radiation right in the center of your brain, doesn't this ricochet all the rf that enters from below the hat?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Surprised the the word shielding doesn't appear anywhere in this article.

<comment><USER13> In the case of a brain implant, shielding would mean more or less a tinfoil hat, however.

<comment><USER14> The device itself could perhaps be better shielded, before implantation.

<comment><USER15> Do brain implants get firmware updates and such wirelessly?

<comment><USER16> My company produces brain implants. Technically you can upgrade the firmware wirelessly (we do this in testing all the time) but nobody wants to take the responsibility for doing that with patients. With more RAM available I think wireless upgrade will be the standard in a few years.

<comment><USER17> Wireless updates viewed as riskier than surgery? Or is it just that the liability moves from your company to the surgeon?

<comment><USER16> For a wireless update you need to be able to store the new firmware in a temp area, verify it and then activate it. Old devices don't have enough memory but that's changing. Also, most new firmware needs new hardware features so this capability may not be that useful in practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> the old devices were based on heart (cardiac) pacemakers which were designed to turn off w/ a magnet. A bit of a dark side to the old chestnut about it not being a bug, it's a feature...

The newer ones use bluetooth so hopefully less susceptible. But yeah, have had case reports of refridgerator doors, mall security, TSA agents overzealous w/ their wands, and one instance w/ a Prius, etc. There is a gizmo they get that they can put up to their device and turn it back on; that being said, a lot of ppl have lost theirs, or have let the AAA batteries in them run out...

</comment><comment><USER19> It should only take a few deaths and lawsuits for this go be fixed.

</comment><comment><USER20> What about faraday cages?

<comment><USER21> Wait, are you suggesting the person with the brain implant wear a literal tin- foil hat?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Tinfoil hat!

</comment><comment><USER23> _Are_ people with brain implants afraid to go through automatic doors?

EDIT: Hi downvoters! Is it common knowledge that they are afraid of automatic doors? This is the first I've heard of such fears. I know maybe two people with brain implants and they've never mentioned it. The article claims this is true, but it claims a lot of things without a lot of data.</comment>


Japan's older hikikomori live in isolation, shunning society for years - <AUTHOR> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/03/21/national/social-issues/japans-older-hikikomori-live-isolation-shunning-society-years/ <comment><USER2> I believe a lot of the fear of hikikomori can be resolved by working remotely.

I'm an American who spent only 5 years working in an office before coming to the conclusion that it wasn't for me. I spend most of my time working from home these days, with the occasional trip to San Francisco to make an appearance at HQ.

Because I still contribute to society, my relationship with my wife stay strong, I am able to socialize without anxiety, and depression from conforming to office society is long passed.

I still shun society in many other ways. I disagree with some schooling systems, most political systems, and others beyond the scope of this comment, but working from home gives me the willpower to make compromises.

</comment><comment><USER3> "There are more than half a million hikikomori in Japan — according to the latest government survey published in 2016 — defined as people who have stayed home for more than six months without going to school or work and interacting with no one other than family."

One question for the hikikomori. If they don't work, how do they get money? I'm sure they can live relatively inexpensive lives but how do they get money to pay for rent? Does he work remotely? Bitcoin investments? So many questions...

<comment><USER4> Many of them are staying at their parents still.

<comment><USER5> I actually think more or less similar developments are happening in the US and Europe. Instead of the specific term hikikomori, they call it an extended adolescence or something similar. Though, 'extended adolescents' do not necessarily shun society. They do live with their parents in most cases, from my own experience at least.

Having said that I may be completely off base here since I do not know Japanese culture well enough.

<comment><USER6> It happens in all societies where people are forced to conform and markets are closed to people without a license. Japan is economically the mono-ethnic version of what US/EU are moving towards: a society where you must fill in the boxes given by the system or f* off.

On hacker news since most people are in CS/IT, a field that is almost free (but not for long), it may look like we still live under goverments that are business friendly. But that's not the case at all in other sectors, and many people aten't allowed to find a place in the market.

People today can't get their feet wet when trying to find a place in the market, they must immediately do a full dive. No wonder more and more are drowning.

<comment><USER7> What an anti-social sentiment. It is not the responsibility for the market to find a "place" for you. It is your job to make that happen. What are you... unemployable? Spending too much time playing video games instead of learning multivariate calculus?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Hikikomori are a result of Japanese salaryman-esque jobs. In order to heal hikikomori, you first need to evolve work.

<comment><USER8> I think you're basically proposing that someone with a cold should get rid of their runny nose to fix their headache.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Personally the sad part is that I wouldn't mind living like him given my current life situations.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am not Japanese, I can only marvel at the complexity and subtleness of Japanese culture. But I sort of get it, you start interacting with anyone and it opens you up to the pressure and the questions and with Enryo you can't really talk openly and be accepted. Would these people be happier living outside of Japan?

<comment><USER11> I'm not japanese so I don't know. But I know that human beings are intensely social creatures and being alone, even if in self exile must be painful. The pain they have must be less than the pain they feel being around others. Some would probably consider going to other lands but sounds like they don't have money for the option. The $25 million the japanese government needs for them sounds like a really small number for nearly half a million of them..

I do well in the states but I think I could relate to what they did in Japan since Japan places such huge amounts of value on honor and self success. It sounds like a double edge sword. It's good to have a society that values success but leaving about half a percent of the population as shut ins doesn't seem right.

<comment><USER12> > But I know that human beings are intensely social creatures and being alone, > even if in self exile must be painful.

I'm not diagnosed as autistic or as a psychopath, but I'm really not a very emotional or social person. I take great pleasure in being alone, _far from the madding crowd_ , and I find it much more difficult to be among other people, mandating the menagerie of masks necessary for me to get where I want to go in society w.r.t. my career etc. I say masks, because unlike many people I seem to meet, I do not have any enthusiasm for consumption, decadence and self-gratification.

I mean, I'm no buddhist or anarchist, I just prefer to perfect my craft over going out on the town or accumulating wealth I'll never use. I'm happy with cereal, I don't need some kind of smoked dolphin's nose on squid-ink dyed seventy-seed toast. I therefore have to act in a certain way, other than as myself, in order to be perceived to be relating to people I meet and work with.

In reality, you might call me a stoic, to use a loose definition of the term. I don't find it painful to act like someone I'm fundamentally not, indeed to act in an archetype I internally find rather absurd, but it is _tiresome_. It tires me greatly to be among other people, and I try to keep my relationships with others to a minimum. I have nothing to hide, I just prefer to spend time in solitary and uninterrupted recreation or study, refining skills and knowledge of topics I find interesting.

I'm not disagreeing with you, and I'm not saying that my individual existence is a significant indicator of anything contrary to your point, but my existence does at least indicate that _some_ humans (since I find it difficult to believe I am alone) aren't as intensely social or pained by isolation as you say – and I dare say there's more than a little overlap between the set of asocial humans and the set of self-isolating _hikikomori_ who prefer no company at all.

Though, in my experience on anonymous message boards over the past fifteen years online, _hikikomori_ (or at least the western equivalent) seem to prefer the company of others like themselves whom they may encounter on said message boards. Or some certainly act like they prefer the imagined company of anime/video game characters to the company of other human beings, most of whom will never, ever come close to understanding them or what they're about.

<comment><USER13> > I say masks, because unlike many people I seem to meet, I do not have any > enthusiasm for consumption, decadence and self-gratification.

You sound insufferable. It's fine not to have in common with people, but pretending you can't get along with others because of their "consumption, decadence, and self-gratification" sounds like nothing more than an excuse for poor social skills.

Every day I break bread with people I have almost nothing in common with, and still manage to have interesting and pleasant conversations. I don't feel the need to collapse into a ball of self-righteous contempt.

<comment><USER12> I _am_ insufferable. Were I not insufferable to people like yourself, for one reason or another, I would not need to wear masks.

I have social skills, and a tongue of only the finest sterling silver, so I need no excuse for a lack of such things. I just wanted to speak frankly about how much I loathe socialising with people, because I find them essentially hollow and/or self-interested.

Any given person may see me as both hollow and self-interested from their perspective, but this is irrelevant to the point I'm making. I see no reason to _want_ to talk to people who are not really listening, so I try to avoid it.

There are times when it cannot be avoided, but that's the price one pays to earn money, which is in turn required to pay live for a home with electricity and an internet connection. I suppose I could just become a bum, drifting between coffee shops with WiFi, but then where would I sleep? Pretty sure I'd have to socialise more if I were to go down that route anyway.

Also, if I 'collapsed into a ball of self-righteous contempt', I'm pretty sure I would be saying 'I cannot socialise' not 'I hate socialising'. Just a minor detail about your slightly rude reply, it doesn't matter that much.

<comment><USER14> This thing you describe comes from internal resistance (may also be called self-reactive filtering) where environment -say, groups of people that you may have some rigid bindings with,(like workplace)- display just the slightest (very toned-down) air of viscious but very real and directed hostility. It's the artifice that bothers you, but this stuff goes deeper. You can fix that by building friendships with open (foolish) people, you just need to find some good ones. Friendships do take some effort, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Job eliminated while on maternity leave - <AUTHOR> I am on maternity leave and was recently informed that my position has been eliminated. Company is in CA. My role is Director Level. Was employee 4 of 9. Have been at the company 11 months, 1 year would have been day of return from leave and day options vested. My role was the only one eliminated. I was offered 1 week severance or accelerated vesting of my 1 year options. 1) How legal is this move on their part? and 2) What is a fair severance package for this level and under these circumstances? <comment><USER2> One week of severance pay doesn't sound like much, and your options may or may not ever be worth anything (assuming the company hasn't IPOed yet). But if they did break any laws by firing you (or even if they violated their own corporate policy), you might be able to get a legal settlement that's worth much more.

So you should really consult with an employment lawyer before signing any severance agreement, since those agreements always ask you to waive your right to sue the company in return for any payment you may receive.

(Note: Since you've only been at the company for less than a year, you're not covered by the FMLA[1].)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_and_Medical_Leave_Act_of_1993)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not legal advise, just from my experience:

CA is an at will employment state, they can terminate you for any reason and do not have to disclose. If there is evidence it is due to discrimination though, you likely have a case. The other reason you may have a case for is if they terminated you so they don't vest your shares, but they are offering you accelerated vesting so that doesn't seem to be the case. IMHO negotiate a better severance (e.g. 1 month pay + vested options for the time you worked there before leave)

Re: fair severance -- IMO A fair value in proportion to your material contributions to your business. 2-8 weeks pay + possibly accelerated vesting

Last and most important, if you really care about pursuing this talk to a lawyer before answering anything from them.</comment>


SBCL SuperBallistic Common Lisp BlueGene P supercomputer port announcement - <AUTHOR> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.steel-bank.devel/14869 <comment><USER2> I love reading about hobby hacking projects such as this. Awesomeness!</comment>


Ask HN: Will Quantum Computing Break Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Something important to keep in mind is the fact that to execute Shor's prime factorization algorithm (which can break encryption protocols, like the RSA) you need millions of physical quantum bits.

Even the most optimistic quantum engineers agree that building such enormous quantum devices is likely 30+ years away. So Bitcoin has plenty of time to adapt.

</comment><comment><USER3> TL:DR Bitcoin will most likely adapt.

>Bitcoin already has some built-in quantum resistance. If you only use Bitcoin addresses one time, which has always been the recommended practice, then your ECDSA public key is only ever revealed at the one time that you spend bitcoins sent to each address. A quantum computer would need to be able to break your key in the short time between when your transaction is first sent and when it gets into a block. It will likely be decades after a quantum computer first breaks a Bitcoin key before quantum computers become this fast.

>All of the commonly-used public-key algorithms are broken by QC. This includes RSA, DSA, DH, and all forms of elliptic-curve cryptography. Public- key crypto that is secure against QC does exist, however. Currently, Bitcoin experts tend to favor a cryptosystem based on Lamport signatures. Lamport signatures are very fast to compute, but they have two major downsides:

>The signature would be quite large, at least several kB (40-170 times larger than now). This would be very bad for Bitcoin's overall scalability, since bandwidth is one of the main limiting factors to Bitcoin's scaling. Advances in scalability such as Segregated Witness (the signature is part of the witness) and Lightning will be helpful. At the time that you create each keypair, you would need to set some finite maximum number of times that you can sign with this key. Signing more than this number of times would be insecure. Increasing the signing limit increases the size of each signature even more. Since you are only really supposed to use addresses once, this may not be a huge problem for Bitcoin. There is also some ongoing academic research on creating quantum-safe public-key algorithms with many of the same properties as today's public-key algorithms, but this is very experimental. It is not known whether it will end up being possible.

>A new public-key algorithm can be added to Bitcoin as a softfork. From the end-user perspective, this would appear as the creation of a new address type, and everyone would need to send their bitcoins to this new address type to achieve quantum security.

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Quantum_computing_and_Bitcoin](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Quantum_computing_and_Bitcoin)</comment>


Google's Equiano Cable Will Extend to the Remote Island of Saint Helena - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/googles-equiano-cable-will-extend-to-the-remote-island-of-saint-helena-flooding-it-with-data <comment><USER2> There are still a LOT of islands on earth that don't have submarine fiber connectivity.

Disclaimer: I work in two-way satellite telecom.

Until the advent of o3b, these were pretty much entirely dependent on various methods of connecting to the outside world via commercial geostationary transponder kHz leases, in the C and Ku bands. Works fine, but minimum 492ms latency return trip, and very expensive in monthly recurring cost per Mbps.

o3b has helped a great deal, in terms of monthly $/Mbps and latency. Further medium earth orbit and low earth orbit things (starlink, oneweb, amazon's kuiper) will help even more.

Due to the high cost of submarine cable construction, unless places happen to be roughly along the route that the cable would be taking anyways (as St. Helena is), there will remain a lot of places where 100% of the WAN link to the outside world will be some combination of LEO/MEO/GEO satellite access.

"Modern" satellite modems that are capable of advanced computation for low density parity codes and advanced FEC methods, plus adaptive coding and modulation to deal with Ku and Ka band rain fade, those certainly help a lot. It still costs a ridiculous amount to build and launch a 3000 to 6500 kilogram sized satellite into geostationary orbit. I am cautiously optimistic that SpaceX's lower launch costs due to reusable rockets will help with this.

Full deployment of the LEO starlink constellation economically seems to be predicated upon the use of a cargo-carrying reusable version of the Starship, which would be able to place many hundreds of satellites in one launch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious, but who is financing this? Google?

DfID have ruled out funding, and it's unlikely St H will get any further EU regional funding.

So - either they're going to be taking an almighty loan, or rely on the kindness of corporations.

I can't see St H becoming a tech hub. It's a lovely place, sure, but they'd need immigration of people with technical skills for that - I can count on one hand the number of saints with computer literacy, and they don't want/can't support any kind of immigrant population. Apart from anything else, all houses are occupied, and there's precious little land upon which to build in Jamestown, and the saints do _not_ want high rises and all the rest. No, I don't speak for them, but I have spoken with them, and it's pretty clear which way the wind blows.

I hope they do get a better connection to the world, but I fear practicality will get in the way. If they do plough ahead and assume the debt (I am assuming that there will be a debt to google), then the rumblings in Whitehall of making crown dependencies responsible for their own budgets might get louder. Their airport (which is perfectly fine, by the by, stunning approach) continues to attract flack as an ill conceived and expensive boondoggle.

<comment><USER4> You're right that there's no native tech talent in a tiny population like that, but who says they don't want any kind of immigrant population? Presumably it doesn't take thousands of people to keep an Earth station running after it's built. I mean, look at less-populated Ascension Island with its BBC relay station.

<comment><USER3> Oh, indeed - it will take but a handful of people to manage, as the C&W dish currently does.

But therein lies the problem. It's unclear what the economic uplift would be, and how it would pay for itself. If it's simply a convenient waystation for the cable, great, but it doesn't seem to be, so to me, the reasoning is unclear.

<comment><USER2> You might be surprised how much is being paid in transponder kHz lease monthly recurring costs, and earth station services on the other end, to provide internet and WAN phone services for the entire population of St Helena. Using submarine fiber might have an ROI under 15 years, if the additional cost to bring the cable to the island (vs bypass it entirely with same cable) is slightly government subsidized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you read the article, the Equiano cable is actually only connecting South Africa, Nigeria and Portugal, aside from Saint Helena.

The "SAEx" cable that's drawn into the map "failed to secure funding"...

<comment><USER6> I would immigrate to an island in the middle of nowhere in a heartbeat. But only if it had a reliable internet connection.

Sad state of affairs really, because the costs are probably insurmountable for the islands inhabitants. I believe they are glad if they manage to maintain an airport.

Satellite based net access isn't my favorite, but probably the more realistic option.

<comment><USER7> Canary Islands have good internet connectivity. At least Tenerife does. Beautiful and affordable place too.

<comment><USER8> It's not in the middle of nowhere though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks like an incredibly forward thinking move. Connecting South America to Africa will provide the opportunity for a wast array of new inter- continental online businesses, focused on countries that today aren't seen as "online hubs".

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm willing to bet Google puts a Loon groundstation on that island. They've been moving south from Puerto Rico to Peru and Kenya. This is in between.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/introd...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/introducing- equiano-a-subsea-cable-from-portugal-to-south-africa)

</comment><comment><USER11> "space-division multiplexing"

LOL, you mean "stringing another wire/fiber". I think we used to call this "bonding".

<comment><USER12> I'm not a hardware engineer or anything, but apparently it's a little more innovative than that. From Google's page ([https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/a-quic...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/a-quick- hop-across-the-pond-supercharging-the-dunant-subsea-cable-with-sdm- technology)) about the previous cable which uses it:

> _Traditional subsea cables are powered from the shore end and rely on a > dedicated set of pump lasers to amplify the optical signal for each fiber > pair as data traverses the length of the cable. Now, SDM technology allows > pump lasers and associated optical components to be shared among multiple > fiber pairs, while still working within the unique power constraints of the > ocean floor._

I don't profess to understand laser pumping, but it sounds like they found a way for multiple fiber pairs to share expensive and/or power-hungry active components. So it is stringing another fiber, but in layman's terms maybe kind of like network bonding by figuring out a trick to plug two ethernet cables into one port.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice place to hang out in the Western European time zone.

</comment><comment><USER14> What about LEO broadband? I mean, I get that space junk is an issue too but it seems better to invest in global Internet via satellite.

<comment><USER2> Given a choice between terrestrial singlemode fiber, and LEO, the satellite system (Starlink, Oneweb, Kuiper, whatever) should always be the second choice. Shannon limit and RF engineering considerations mean that the total capacity of spot beams passing over a given area will be a lot less than fiber.

Looking at the population of St. Helena I would be very surprised if the entire nation-state/island uses more than a single 100GbE wavelength back to the cable landing stations in the US/Europe.

From a landing station in St. Helana, access can be distributed by some combination of GPON fiber, terrestrial fixed PTP and PTMP wireless, maybe re- use of existing copper with vdsl2, g.fast, DOCSIS3/DOCSIS3.1, etc.

<comment><USER15> Also have to factor in the NSA bandwidth requirements..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Their options are almost no internet or all the internet.

</comment><comment><USER17> Maybe they can become a casino hosting jurisdiction?

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm of mixed feelings about this. Yes, it's great for the people of Saint Helena. But it would be nice if we could have a few remote places on Earth stay remote.

AT&T is lobbying the federal government for permission to put cell towers in Death Valley. Death Valley is fine without them. It doesn't need more tourist conveniences. It has"Death" in its name for a reason.

On the other hand, if this is something the people of Saint Helena voted for and approved, then it's up to them. I just hope it wasn't pushed on them by a bureaucrat.

<comment><USER19> Sometimes you have to drive through Death Valley to get to other places and cell reception is kind of important in a place like that. Imagine having a baby in your car, it breaks down with no cell reception and it's 130F temperatures outside

<comment><USER2> If you plan to go somewhere that leaving the main highway, and mechanical failure of your vehicle means there is a high likelihood of death, you should be going in groups of more than one vehicle and taking an Iridium satellite phone with you.

Expecting cellular coverage in places that are literally "the middle of fucking nowhere" is not reasonable. Remote parts of the western US states are too sparsely populated for this to make economic sense for cellular carriers.

People spend a thousand bucks on all sorts of frivolous stuff. For way less than that you can buy a gently used Iridium 9555 on eBay and a few new batteries for it, and a 20W folding solar panel.

<comment><USER19> Who said anything about leaving the main highway? Is AT&T trying to provide signal where they know nobody will ever go? That sounds odd. I assumed we were talking about places humans go

<comment><USER2> All of the death valley fatalities I'm aware of are from people who left the main highway. I've driven through there. As long as you stick to the main, paved roads, there is sufficient car traffic that it is highly unlikely you're going to die from a car breakdown.

<comment><USER19> Maybe so but cell service would still be nice.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NewsFireRSS is now free for OS X users - <AUTHOR> http://newsfirerss.com/

<comment><USER2> With netnewswire available for free (with a lot more features, I might add), this was only inevitable.

Now, if only DW will rethink his stance on xtorrent being shareware given that many other bittorrent clients are vastly better and also free (rtorrent, utorrent, azureus, transmission, ...). Maybe some people are into paying for shiny interfaces but I don't see how he can be that profitable selling things where there are better and free alternatives.

Plus, while he might be some UI genius, his customer support skills are unimaginably awful.

<comment><USER3> Personally, I don't care to support Watanabe at all after the Inquisitor thing.</comment></comment>


Europe's war on cookies - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-05/11/cookies-regulations?page=all

<comment><USER2> > Traditionally, the US and the UK have taken a more relaxed approach to > privacy. But the legislative and interventionist tendencies of Europe -- and > of France and Germany in particular

Now, this is the first time in a decade that I couldn't avoid a smug face and tiny bit of affection formy home country..

Seriously: As others pointed out here, this is a targeted law against privacy breaches. If your company builds its business model on user tracking you'd better ask them to opt in.

I seriously cannot even understand the negative sentiment.

<comment><USER3> What's wrong with advertising geared towards your interests? Or do you enjoy watching ads on penis enlargements, gambling, whitening teeth and How To Get Rich While Sleeping?

<comment><USER4> It implies that someone has built a profile describing your interests from your behaviour. Many people find that creepy, and not worth targeted advertising. It's reminiscent of secret police behaviour with their networks of informants, and is not a distant memory in much of Europe.

<comment><USER3> It's not much different than any other recommendation system though. It's also funny how these ads exist because they work - i.e. the user actually does find them interesting, clicks on them, and discovers a product they pay money for because it brings them value.

<comment><USER5> If you're certain I'll agree to being tracked as to receive a better advertising experience, simply ask first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The UK Information Commissioner's report on the coming legislation:

[http://www.ico.gov.uk/~/media/documents/library/Privacy_and_...](http://www.ico.gov.uk/~/media/documents/library/Privacy_and_electronic/Practical_application/advice_on_the_new_cookies_regulations.pdf)

There is no requirement to ask for permission to issue cookies if the cookies are "strictly necessary" for the task, such as for logging into a user account or using a one-click -style purchase. I have the impression that it will principally affect user-tracking systems like Google Analytics and those used in targeted advertising.

Something about the law is unclear to me: the ICO's summary of the law seems only to apply if you store state about the cookie. If you insert Google's javascript to issue an Analytics cookie, doesn't that make it Google's problem, since they are storing the data about the cookie? Which would be kind of harsh, since they have no control of the web page's behaviour. But the ICO report talks of there being site owner's responsibility if they cause the data gathering to happen, which suggests that is the problem of the Analytics javascript embedder.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats a good find. However "strictly necessary" is pretty vague. Tracking your own users on your site to optimise it for them would potentially be out of the question. Though if you sign up you could implicitly allow it with terms and conditions.

Still doesn't help with anonymous users...

<comment><USER6> I'm still reading the ICO report. It does talk at some length about what kind of measures are needed to comply with the coming legislation, and emphasises that the rule is about privacy protection, and that uses of cookies that don't build up a picture of users aren't what it targets.

The legislation does look bad for startups whose business plan revolves around accumulating data on users or selling targeted ads, but the ICO report looks pretty aware of how cookies are used in practice and not at all the "ignorant intervention" that the article describes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are other ways to track users than cookies[1]. With enough browser information you can identify users fairly uniquely.

[1] <http://panopticlick.eff.org/>

</comment><comment><USER8> One thing I don't get is how a site-owner is meant to know what cookies a 3rd party may send. If I add a Facebook "like" button to my site, does FB send a cookie? What if they don't now but decide to later. And if FB does decide to use cookies down the line, how do they ask your opt-in?

You can send cookies with any HTTP reply, so how do you know if that image you are hot-linking from a 3rd party site doesn't send back a cookie?

There seem to be so many technical vagaries that make this so tricky to implement properly.

<comment><USER6> This seems to be pretty hazy. The ICO report says _we would advise anyone whose website allows or uses third party cookies to make sure that they are doing everything they can to get the right information to users and that they are allowing users to make informed choices about what is stored on their device._

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see this also covers the use of Flash cookies, but I wonder about the use of Etags as a tracking mechanism.

If I recall correctly, some of these sites use cookies, Flash cookies and also unique Etags on an object in the browser cache to try to work around people blocking cookies from their domains.

<comment><USER6> Any technology causes client machines to store information for later access are within the scope of the law.

The exact wording is _a person shall not store or gain access to information stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user unless the requirements ... are met._

<comment><USER9> OK - that's great.

In practical terms though, all they're storing is a key. The actual data is held elsewhere. In the same way, an entity tag on a cached object is like a key to identify whether the object has been modified on the server since the last time it was sent.

How would it be possible to spot that it was being used for tracking a user rather than just part of the normal functioning of the browser?

<comment><USER6> That's really an enforcement problem, not a legislative problem.

Even so, I think the answer is clear: it depends on whether you store data that permits you to infer privacy-intruding things about the user. If you store a cookie that just encodes preferences and you store no persistent data about the cookie on your side, you should be fine. It's the making a relationship between client local state and your customer profiles that's key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't get it, how do users login to the websites (like gmail) without using cookies ? Does this legislation target only permanent cookies that stay even after the user has logged out ?

<comment><USER6> According to the ICO report on the legislation I linked to, use of cookies needed to provide the user with a service they have requested is explicitly permitted. Likewise, if your use of the cookie does not violate privacy (i.e., you don't build up a user profile), it is OK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do the regulations say anything about localstorage ? I guess one could use that in place of a cookie..

<comment><USER12> AIUI it's not specific to http cookies, but applies to anything being used as a cookie. So flash cookies, html5 local storage etc all count as cookies for the purposes of this rule.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do You Have an On-Call Schedule Calculator? - <AUTHOR> Tapping the collective brain, to avoid writing custom software for this: have you ever encountered an on-call schedule calculator of sorts: you plug in 20 people's requested days, scheduling restrictions, and requested days off and it spits out possible schedules that satisfy everyone (or show conflicts if there is no perfect permutation)? Some sub-set variation of the above functionality would help as well - ex: api that does the above sans visuals, or a version that lets people enter schedules to reconcile them instead of one user, etc . <comment><USER2> This sounds like an exact cover problem.

Optimimum solutions to exact cover problems are non-polynomial (NP). There's also a human problem. No on-call schedule will make people happy because on- call is unpleasant. The best on-call schedule for you is for me to do all the on-call. Or two human problems: the manager's job prioritizes covering on-call over happiness...and uses on-call instead of hiring night/weekend staff so nobody does on-call. Roughly speaking, one person on call for nights, weekends, and holidays can be replaced by three FTE's. That's only a 15% staff increase in a twenty person organization.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is for medical shift workers who are paid per shift so they declare how many shifts they want - 2 or 3 per month. All shifts are the same.

<comment><USER2> If it's good work and all shifts are the same, hiring FTE's should be easy. And of similar cost assuming the on-call shifts pay the regular wage.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are FTEs. Hospitals need 24/7/365 coverage for certain roles and no single person can cover that much, thus shift work is required. Do you have suggestions for software that can help them distribute the available shifts between each-other?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is for a group of equal medical workers sharing a paid per-call pool, each requesting a number of calls per month. It's about calculating the permutation that leaves as many people happy as possible and potentially assigning a point system so those less happy can get higher priority choices next month.</comment>


DevOps Django - The Heroku Way - <AUTHOR> http://rdegges.com/devops-django-part-3-the-heroku-way <comment><USER2> Or you could use ep.io, which is comparably awesome and boasts a generous free _per-app_ quota. Either way, these services are great for django. Yay!

<comment><USER3> FYI, Heroku also offers 750 free hours _per-app_.

<comment><USER4> To elaborate on this: that's enough to run an entire website for free (excluding celery).

If you want to run a celery worker (including beat), you're looking at a total cost of 30$ per month. That's enough for most moderate traffic websites. :)

<comment><USER3> Of course you can run celery within the same process too.

Our process model is really only measuring application entry-points. You could have your free "process" spin off 10 other subprocesses beneath it. The only constraint is RAM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This came just in time for me : I need to post up REST demo django app, and was considering taking the dive into Heroku. You've convinced me to jump.

Thanks.</comment>


Open source Mono framework brings C# to iPhone and Wii - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090108-open-source-mono-framework-brings-c-to-iphone-and-wii.html <comment><USER2> As someone whose work life involves a lot of C# development I can honestly say it's a great little language that would get used much more if it's name wasn't tied to Microsoft. Beyond that there's no doubt the Mono project has done some impressive things.

That said, I wouldn't do this on a commercial project. Because when a bug does come up you just have too many layers to contend with. Is it a bug in my code, in the Unity Framework, in Mono, in the device or what? This is a particularly significant problem when dealing with Open Source projects with very little in the area of support mechanisms and Apple which seems to think far too much of itself to offer decent developer support.

So in the end it's a nifty proof of concept but I personally couldn't bring myself to trust it.

<comment><USER3> As someone whose work life involves a lot of development of C# development tools, I can honestly say that these concerns apply to our team at Microsoft just as much as they apply to Mono. The only difference is that when someone asks us a question about some bugs or our direction or policies, we have to ignore it to appease the lawyers. This is a risk you run if you write any software at all, no matter the vendor.

EDIT: Although, if you are writing a commercial, big budget game, our game development support staff is incredible. So if you want that, then yeah, you'd have to use one of our official products. My comment was about if you didn't intend to go that big publisher route. I was talking mostly about small ISVs.

<comment><USER2> "bug" or, if you prefer, there are "bugs" and there are "quirks". I can't say that I've ever found a full on bug in the .net framework but I have encountered several quirks that had us baffled but which were solved in 5 minutes with a quick call to Microsoft.

Bottom Line: Our contract with them cost us $2500 and no matter what the problem has been (be it code, OS, whatever) they've fixed it.

When we looked at Mono we found only one viable service vendor and that was Novell. Their contract was prohibitively expensive (I think it was like $11,000) and their support stopped at Mono. Meaning to use this solution you'd have to have their support, plus a linux vendor support contract, plus Unity support, etc ...

<comment><USER4> I ran into a problem at a previous job with the catch-code in the "global" try block in an ASP.Net app, itself throwing an exception. IIS just dies with a 8-digit hex code that according to MSDN means pretty much whatever ("try some or all of these 15 different possible solutions").

It took a few days working the support, and I did get on a conference call with some brilliant people, and they figured it out quickly - using a (forget its name) debugger that talks directly to the CRL (which the one in Visual Studio apparently doesn't).

All this because (I think) something somewhere in that stack decided to "protect" me from the cause of the error.

This is generally my problem with Microsoft. No so much the arbitrary discussion of whether or not it sucks, but the difficulty of getting under its helmet, which tends to make problems much bigger than they ought to be.

<comment><USER4> And yes, I DO know it's incredibly bad design to put so much code in a global catch-block that it can fail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I work with C# at my work and it is actually a very nice language. If you haven't checked it out, you probably should. For obvious reasons it hasn't reached the hip crowd yet, but if you play with it you will see some very positive things.

<comment><USER6> C#: Write once, run anywhere.

<comment><USER7> In my experience Mono blows for C#, though it could be good for other things.

1) it's always behind the current version of C#

2) even for past versions it still doesn't fully support C#

I'm not sure about this one, but to use mono commercially don't you need to get a paid license for SUSE?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> With GCJ, the same should be possible for languages based on the Java VM too (including Java). Consequently you would be able to get Clojure, Scala, Groovy or Jython on the iPhone too.

I think most of the fame for actually pulling this off for Mono/.NET needs to go to the Unity engineers and not so much to the Mono gang. Although this is speculation on my part.

</comment><comment><USER9> Please save me from Objective C .... I hope this article isn't just a tease.

<comment><USER10> As someone who has done a minimal amount of Objective-C programming in the past, I have to agree. That being said, I've also heard a lot of hackers rave about it. I'm confused over why there's such a love/hate relationship with this language. Whats the story with Apple's dev environment being so Obj-C heavy? What's the chance they'll spring for it's replacement?

<comment><USER11> Apple inherited Obj-C in late 1996 when they decided on NextStep as the replacement for the aging Mac OS. (That purchase also brought in Steve Jobs as an "adviser" to CEO Gil Amelio... Six months later, Amelio and the executives that had made the Next decision were out and Jobs was running the show.)

At first Obj-C's future at Apple seemed far from certain. First there was a proposal to make the syntax more like C++, and later there was a strong push to switch to Java as the main language for the Cocoa API. Next's flagship product WebObjects (a Cocoa-based Web app server and framework) was rewritten in Java by the year 2000. Mac OS X still hadn't shipped, but Obj-C was not getting a place in the limelight as most of the new APIs were plain C (CoreFoundation, CoreAudio, new Carbon) to accomodate both old Mac developers and cross-platform developers.

Apple's Obj-C faith was gradually restored during this decade. The touted Cocoa-Java bridge did work, but there was a fairly fundamental "impedance mismatch" between Cocoa's API design and Java's static nature. Cocoa-Java was deprecated in Mac OS X 10.4, leaving Obj-C as the only native development language for Cocoa.

Carbon on the other hand kept growing up to 10.5, and it gained a lot of features that were effectively plain-C wrapped C++ implementations of Cocoa features (HIViews, NIB support). Clearly the notion of having to maintain these parallel APIs for GUI development didn't please decision makers at Apple, as 64-bit Carbon was pulled at the last minute from OS X 10.5, thus leaving Obj-C and Cocoa as the only game in Mac town for 64-bit GUI applications (which of course sent a clear signal that building new applications on Carbon isn't a good idea regardless of whether you need 64-bit support right now).

So why did Obj-C win? At least one thing that makes it a good fit for publishing OS-level APIs is that it's inherently late-bound and duck-typed. A Cocoa program can thus easily make use of new API features without having to explicitly link against the new version of the framework. (This is particularly important because Apple doesn't update their frameworks separately from the OS, unlike Microsoft with .NET.)

For example, if Mac OS X 10.3 added a -foo:bar: method to NSWindow, an application could easily check for the availability of this particular method while still maintaining compatibility with older operating systems, like this:

if ([window respondsToSelector:@selector(foo:bar:)]) { // do fancy 10.3 specific effects here }

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> HN's duplicate detection not working?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=427531>

<comment><USER13> That is odd: the urls seems to be exactly the same. And when I tried to submit it again, (just now, as a test,) I was taken to your original submission, not this one.

<comment><USER12> It would be interesting to look at the exact URL that the OP posted - maybe it was sanitized after the duplicate check?</comment></comment></comment>


Crypto Voucher- Simple, secure and easy way of buying cryptocurrencies - <AUTHOR> https://cryptovoucher.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> To start trading or to invest your money, Crypto Voucher is the easiest and most convenient way to enter the crypto world. We offer a solution to buy Bitcoin, Litecoin or Ethereum instantly with Credit Cards, you can use it yourself or gift it to someone else as a Bitcoin Gift Card.</comment>


Ask HN: How long should money the 1st investment last? - <AUTHOR>

It's a bit weird situation. I got accepted into an accelerator, will go with them unless there's something I like more and there's just ~10 days left before I have to sign the papers.
I just finished an initial Skype call with two guys from a really nice VC fund (made of people who have created successful startups themselves). They like my startup and are willing to work under this unusual time pressure. My gut tells me that when it comes to non-financial aspects of the relationship, it could be better to go with them.
They asked me to send them a list of expected expenses. I know pretty well how much I'm gonna need, but I don't know how much it should last for.  While I have some income and it's likely it will increase over the next 6 months, it's not guaranteed and I think I should assume it won't go up, just to be safe.
So how long do I need to be able to run on this 1st investment?  6 months? 12? 18? <comment><USER2> The most important question before raising money is what do you want to achieve with it. Raising a round just for the sake of raising a round might not be the best thing for your business. Set a goal and the resources you need, multiply by 2. This is the rule of thumb I go with, because the work you'll do will take more time than expected and you need to have a buffer on top of this. Keep in mind that raising a bigger round takes time. Make sure you have long enough runway after you've completed your goals, so you can start raising a second round if needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. So I think that I can build what I want in 3-4 months, but most likely will not be able to support that operation just yet. And I will not want to scale down just because my MVP is done.</comment></comment>


gitkit-js: A Pure JS Implementation of Git - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SamyPesse/gitkit-js <comment><USER2> Looks very nice. I'm currently using git2html[1] to provide a Web view of my git repos, but generating all pages up-front doesn't scale very well (I've tweaked it to only process the 10 newest commits on each branch).

Would be nice to have a viewer which calculates HTML on-demand, without requiring any server-side code.</comment>


Ask HN: How to find a place in the Bay Area? - <AUTHOR>

I recently moved to San Jose and am finding it impossible to find a place to stay. I don't even know how to look. Craigslist is low quality. I've managed to get a couple appointments using ApartmentGuide - one being a no-go and the other a compromise. I also have two more appointments coming up tomorrow but one of them is in the middle of nowhere and the other has bad reviews online - a few incidents of cars being stripped (not sure if it's cross posting). No one seems to answer the calls on the numbers listed on Zillow. I just discovered MyApartmentMap and will try them out. How do you find a place? How do you decide if it's worth the price? Are prices negotiable? How much of the salary (before tax) should one spend on rent? I've no sane person to ask these questions to so I'm falling back on the HN community. <comment><USER2> Try <https://www.padmapper.com/>

I don't know much about SJ but I can tell you about my experience in SF.

Tenants have the upper hand over landlords in SF, but landlords have the upper hand over /prospective tenants/; you won't have much ability to negotiate prices and you'll need to act fast to get a place once it's listed or especially after an open house.

I recommend you get a generic short-term rental from a big company and make that your base for a few months. Spend a lot of time hanging out in various neighborhoods and then move to your long(er) term favorite.

</comment><comment><USER3> Moved to SF recently, and was looking for a place with roommate. It was EXTREMELY hard to get anytime, and demand was insane. I ended up renting a 2 bed room apartment from a complex, and posted an ad looking for roommates on Craigslist. The response was impressive (~10 applicants within an afternoon).

</comment><comment><USER4> I went through the same process upon moving out here, but I got lucky having found my place through HN. Send me an email I may have an option for you and if nothing else I can try and guide you in the right direction

</comment><comment><USER5> Craigslist

LiveLovely

Padmapper</comment>


Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To it. (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000017.html?rdrct=1

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I'm posting this link because I strongly believe that we have history repeating itself. We might have 1996/1997 right now so let's go back in time and learn something :) I mean - those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

This post is a great recap of what people during the bubble thought about software development.

Personally I don't want another bubble - the one in 1999 was enough for me ;)</comment>


Thank goodness we hired someone who can reverse a b tree on a whiteboard (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ieatkillerbees/status/808831573785243649 <comment><USER2> I partially disagree.

I completely agree that "trick" questions only select for people comfortable with trick questions. It doesn't hurt if someone who is good at them that is on the team but let it happen organically -- and let it be a non-jerk, which is more important!

I completely agree that coding problems can be excuses for jerks to nitpick, and about the only "good" thing that could come out of such a situation is that the candidate learns that the company employs jerks and doesn't mind them talking to candidates.

 _However:_

The whiteboard can be a welcoming tool if used right. How do you think, how do you talk about the problem, do you actually know the basics?

We use Java, C++, Python and Javascript. We do want you to know one of them. We don't care, in the interview if you forget or misname the name of a routine, or get the arguments backwards (you're not in front of a computer; you don't have to worry about your typing speed, looking up the name, unfamiliar settings on the machine you're in front of, house style etc). We don't care if you forgot a semicolon or even a closing brace, much less a #include. Use whichever language you're most comfortable from the set you'd be using in your job. The best "problems" should be less than a dozen lines, even without any fancy tricks.

We pick something boring, say from the standard library, and nothing tricky like a hash table. _Really_ boring like floor(). If you can't figure out how floor() does its "magic" that's scary. If you need to look up how to balance a tree in place, that would be no big deal so don't put someone on the spot. If you claim to know python but can't print your outputm, that's bad. If you claim to know python and your indentation isn't clear on the whiteboard who cares?

I've told this story on HN before: almost 20 years ago I interviewed a candidate who wrote a routine to shuffle a deck of cards on the whiteboard (we use even simpler examples today). His program ended up elaborately coping the input to the output without shuffling. One of us asked, "Is that really a shuffle?" He said, "Oh I'm a fucking idiot" and fixed it. He was an awesome hire.

At one company we had a standard question (again, write XXX from the standard library) that had a special outlying case. Only one candidate got that, but we hired several people who missed it. Stuff like that can be caught in code review.

But I've interviewed several candidate who spoke well and claimed to know, say, C, but couldn't write "hello, world" in that language. Whiteboard caught it.

<comment><USER3> I've recently had an interview where the interviewer scraped my most recent project off of GitHub, then asked me to add a feature, using a whiteboard. In my opinion this is the RIGHT WAY to do it. The codebase is obviously familiar to the candidate, along with the problem domain. This rules out memorization, puzzle gaming, etc... It informs on programming style, ability to somewhat think on ones feet, but doesn't exclude candidates who didn't happen to guess what the interviewer wanted before the interview began.

<comment><USER4> No, that's the completely wrong way to do it. Download the code onto a computer. Ask the candidate to add a feature.

Or, do a screen share.

The moment I'm asked to write code on a whiteboard, I politely ask to use a computer. If they can't accommodate (I bring my own laptop just in case), the interview ends.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I agree that in a perfect world, people whose jobs will entirely consist of working on a computer, mostly in an IDE, should not be interviewed on a whiteboard. But the whiteboard is a filter for people who are so unfamiliar with programming that they can't reason without the crutch of an IDE. For example, I've seen some people who can do amazing things with Scratch IDE, but can't sit down in front of nano or vim and hammer out code to save their lives. IDE's can be a crutch for thorough learning of a language, and I learned that by leaning too hard on JetBrains, then trying to dev over ssh on a raspi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So true. And so deliciously snarky. Confession: I'm guilty of far greater stupidity. I've asked "Ship of Theseus" questions when interviewing candidates for object database companies, and conservation puzzles, like tessellating a chessboard missing diagonal corners with dominoes. Because "Thank goodness I hired coders who can discuss philosophical identity problems". At least people who can reverse a b tree on a whiteboard can code an algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interviewing has been solved a long time ago with the invention of FizzBuzz. If they can solve it, hire them. If they can't don't. If you're worried its too easy then turn up the difficulty and ask them write an implementation of fizzbuzz that makes use of specific features of a language or framework. If you are BigCo and need to crank the difficulty up really high you can ask the candidate to implement a solution to calculate which number contributes the most the letter z appearing in the output of fizzbuzz between the numbers 5 trillion and 143 trillion, preferably involving a Hadoop cluster.

If you're a SaaS company and you're hiring a sales person, instead of the typical "sell me this pen" you can even replace it with "sell me FizzBuzz".

I'm telling you, it's bullet proof.

<comment><USER7> How can FizzBuzz be complicated for anybody? The solution is so obvious. I thought it was some sort of trick question but apparently not.

[http://wiki.c2.com/?FizzBuzzTest](http://wiki.c2.com/?FizzBuzzTest)

<comment><USER6> Well... vanilla FizzBuzz is easy peasy. Ask them to draw an architecture diagram for FizzBuzz Enterprise Edition on a whiteboard. Or ask them to implement it without using the modulus operator... muahaha. I'm sure that'd stump almost everyone.

You can make FizzBuzz incredibly complicated if you deviate from the vanilla FizzBuzz.

<comment><USER7> Asking for it without using the modulus operator is a bit evil haha.

I like this exercise and I sent it to a friend who has a few years of programming experience but is still learning heavily.

The first solution lacked the number being printed but everything else was right. Second solution had the number, but he missed the FizzBall when the number was divisible by both three and five. The third solution lacked the Fizz when it was divisible by three. Finally his fourth solution was correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is really funny that some people spend months preparing for a job interview though it is equally morbid because they gotta be a bit insane to do it, and those are the people that will end up working on the next AI surveillance/manipulation technology.

</comment><comment><USER8> For a person who put management as an algorithm, these computer professional nouns can not remember, and did not deliberately to learn.

The common data structure or algorithm questions to do the test content, can only recruit people who memorize by rote.

I think only need to give the initial data status and final data status, the candidate is required to write pseudo-code (or schematic).

[https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow](https://github.com/linpengcheng/PurefunctionPipelineDataflow)

</comment><comment><USER9> BALL-PITS and CLOWN NOSES

I worked with a guy, Bob, in our college computer room. Bob had returned to get his BS after many years in industry. He had great stories. He also had great advice. He taught me that you can learn a lot about how a company will treat their employees by paying attention to the way they treat you during the interview. He suggested several sign that indicated it was best to just "walk away".

If you go into a restaurant for a professional lunch meeting and they have a ball-pit / swing set /etc. it might not be the most professional place to hold the meeting. Just walk away.

If you go to a 5 star restaurant and they want you to wear a clown nose (Everybody Does It!) Just walk away.

The big scam is "We hire the best and the brightest". "We mandate a whiteboard test (Everybody Does It)". It is my opinion (based on experience) that companies that insist on a whiteboard test, despite years of programming on your resume and open source code, are either Ball-Pit companies (who don't know what it means to be a professional) or Clown-Nose companies (who know what it means to be a professional but still treat you like a commodity). Just walk away.

When you object, please reference one study in a journal that shows that whiteboard tests are effective in any measure when used during interviews.

I understand why Google does it. I've even interviewed there. They get thousands of resumes (which they never read, at least nobody did at my interviews). They have to weed out the "learn coding in 6 weeks" crowd. But you're a professional. You should expect to be treated like one. You don't ask your surgeon to cut up hams in an interview. You don't ask your builder to nail two boards together. Professional accountants are not interviewd by bank tellers and ask to count change.

Google, like Microsoft before it (remember the "why are manholes round? quizes?"), have combined the marketing claim "We hire the best and brightest" with the ball-pit mentality of whiteboarding. Google HR (sorry, People Resource?) SHOULD be embarrassed but apparently they, and upper management, LIKE ball-pits.

A real professional interview involves a discussion about what the company does, what it current problems are (aka why are they hiring), and a discussion of if you, as a professional, have the skills to solve the problem. What do they need? How can you contribute? It is likely that your interviewer has no idea what you are being interviewed for and cannot answer these basic questions.

We, as professionals, should consider whiteboarding as an insult.

Just walk away.

</comment><comment><USER10> Get a sense of somebody in an interview using minimal time, hire them, try them out and if they can't do the job fire them.

That hones your skills in spotting fakes, and your skills in giving people the hard word. Both of which are incredibly valuable in business.

I don't see the time trade off in having complex interview systems. It has to be mostly a power play.

I wonder when somebody will write the book "agile interviewing - twelve steps to get it done in an hour"

<comment><USER11> The only bit I disagree with is "get a sense of somebody in an interview", which is likely to lead to unintentional discrimination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Twitter snark is a larger net negative contribution to our profession than misguided interview techniques.

</comment><comment><USER13> The criticism misses the point of these tests, no one cares if you can reverse a b-tree or not. It's meant to serve as proxy for a good candidate, one that can reverse a b-tree is expected to have more coding chops than someone that can't.

Whether they're good or bad proxies is certainly debatable, but at least that's asking the right question.

<comment><USER3> I can derive a b-tree reversal on a whiteboard in a Faraday cage given a few hours and a pot of coffee. I can memorize someone else's reversal solution in maybe half an hour. The first method tests my ability to logically break down a problem and find an elegant solution. The second tests my ability to memorize shit. Candidates don't have a chance to do the first during any interview I've ever heard of; so logically you'll be hiring those of the second variety. Good luck with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wasn't it a binary tree? Reversing a binary tree is well defined and obvious even to people, who never heard of it. But a b-tree? I would simply turn the problem into walking the tree in reverse and don't reverse it in-place.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reversing a binary tree is supposed to be an easy warmup question, not the meat of an interview. With a b-tree, you add some fluff to the problem.</comment>