Seriously, we need multi-column editors - <AUTHOR> http://falconair.github.io/2015/03/03/we-need-multicolumn-editors.html <comment><USER2> Second image ([http://falconair.github.io/assets/multicolumn/4k.png](http://falconair.github.io/assets/multicolumn/4k.png)) shows IntellJ IDEA, that has multi-column editing. The first screenshot ([http://falconair.github.io/assets/multicolumn/retina.png](http://falconair.github.io/assets/multicolumn/retina.png)) shows Atom, that has multi-column editing as well. WTF?

He also has an IQueueFactory class, that seems like some nice antipattern to me ;) *Edit: also, use QuickFIX, don't write your own. Been there, done that, does not worth it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Looks like lots of people are mixing up multi-column editing with split pane views. I want the same file laid out in multiple columns to make use of the screen real-estate. If such functionality does indeed exist (other than emacs :) ), please let me know. I haven't been able to find it.

Regarding the anti-pattern. You may be right, I have't updated the code in a few years. I displayed it in the screenshot only because it is already open source. But I do need the option of writing files to disk, writing to some random data store or just keep the data in memory. Send me a note about your idea, the whole point of opening it up was to get feedback.

QuickFIX is pretty good, but doesn't hurt to experiment :)

<comment><USER3> If your class is so big that you need to have multiple views of it, then it probably doesn't have great SOLID metrics.

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't have any files over 200 or so lines of code?

<comment><USER3> I do and I regard them as a bug in need of refactoring. I just ran sloccount on one of our key services and the largest non-test file is 106 lines. It has three methods that do not call each other. The largest test file is 268 lines.

Then again we have another service with four files over 1000 lines (1441 the biggest), and we experience significant pain: not because of the size of the files but because of what the size of the class means about its design. That's on a team that had significant pressure to meet some tight deadlines. They are now actively working on refactoring those classes - again, not because of the size, but because of the design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I must have different eyes to everyone else in the human race...

It seems like on PC/Linux/etc every time resolution increases font size and everything else gets tinier. They might be taking up the same number of pixels on a 1080p and 4K display, but those pixels have physically shrunk. So the result is that millimeter to millimeter they have shrunk and your eyes need to focus on a smaller "thing."

Staring at tiny text all day is exhausting, but yet a lot of people love to do it as they constantly rave about how 1080p or 4K give them "more screen real estate" (because now everything is tiny). This is another example of that. Instead of the OP just increasing the font size, they've let the text get smaller and smaller and are now complaining that they have too much wasted space.

On all Windows machines I now run I use 125% DPI to try and make the text readable over long periods. On my Surface 3 I use 150% DPI which breaks a lot of stuff.

Honestly as far as I am concerned Apple are the only one that got this right when they scaled everything so it stays the same size (in real terms) as resolution increases (effectively giving your text more pixels, so it looks smoother). Windows is terrible and Linux is worse.

But since every other human seems to have cyborg eyes and is immune from eye strain I guess none of this matters...

<comment><AUTHOR> With modern monitors, I could increase the font size until it matches a toddler's alphabet book, I wold still have plenty of space left for at least a couple more columns :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Emacs already has exactly this built in with follow-mode.

[http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Fol...](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Follow- Mode.html)

<comment><USER6> Same with (Neo)Vi(m)

<comment><USER7> Are you sure it's equivalent to follow-mode, not just vertical splits? Follow- mode emulates the file wrapping to the next column when it reaches the end of a buffer, and if the cursor moves across the top/bottom boundary it'll appear on the other buffer instead of scrolling the current buffer. And the buffers are synchronised as a single "page".

edit: apparently you can do that with scrollbind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is that Sublime Text, Atom, or Brackets? Sublime Text has great multicolumn (and grid) support, but I don't use the others.

Although, if you use a tiling window manager and use lightweight non-single- window IDE/editors, you can just launch multiple windows and your window manager can do the rest. Multi-columns seems like a more natural job for window managers, so editors should be designed to naturally handle multiple windows and be able to quickly close and open them.

<comment><USER9> This was my first thought, and you're right. But what if the author means two columns as in a newspaper or magazine, where the same content continues off the bottom of the left pane to the top of the right one? Does anything support that? Would it be useful?

<comment><USER10> Emacs provides this with Follow Mode:

[http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Fol...](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Follow- Mode.html)

<comment><USER11> Interestingly I find the default behavior more helpful. Usually if there are any declarations or some init code at the top and some use of those later, I would want to view the top of the file in one column and work or edit in another part without having both scroll synchronously.

Sometimes I have the same file open in 3 or 4 columns if I need to see what is happening in multiple parts of the code in front of me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As in all tech, the future is already here, just very unevenly distributed. Fire up emacs, "control-x 3" and there you are. Next up will be googling about windmove-default-keybindings so that shift-arrowkeys does what you'd expect in an emacs frame (or has this become the default over recent years?).

For a good time try control-x 2 and finish with some control-x 1.

<comment><USER13> Add winner mode to get undo and redo with your window layouts. C-c left and C-c right

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> To be honest I don't have this problem because I selected a tool set that does this already.

Tiling window managers (Awesome, XMonad, etc) and VIM do all of this and more, and I use them every day with great ease. In fact, moving away from them and having to use a 'click + drool' GUI (Unity, KDE, Gnome, etc) to move windows around feels slightly painful to me now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you referring to tiling or laying out a single file across multiple columns?

<comment><USER14> You can do both of those in vim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How to do it using vim: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5131205/how-to- edit-text-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5131205/how-to-edit-text-in- multiple-columns-in-vim) Seriously, just google it :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I'm the one who asked that question years ago :) I'm the author of this article.

Vim does come closest to what I want. However, I'd like to be able to do this in intellij, eclipse, sublime, atom, etc. In other words, my contention is that this should be a standard feature, like syntax highlighting or code folding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder if Atom could achieve that with CSS3 Multiple Columns

<comment><AUTHOR> I just looked up css3 multiple columns. Great pointer. I'll investigate it, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> can i second the 'just use emacs' argument?

i look forward to the day i can fire up emacs on multiple 4k monitors

its a bit tragic that a programmer doesn't already know this fact?

</comment><comment><USER18> Emacs has done this for years.

<comment><USER19> And at least a hundred other editors. I don't get this post.

<comment><USER11> People get to talk about their favorite editor. So it gets upvoted. Programmers love to talk about their tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I use Mjolnir[1] to arrange term, Atom or IDEA windows. It's quite efficient since you can switch/resize them very quickly and you don't have to rely on your full-screen-IDE's embedded terminal for console output.

[1] [https://github.com/sdegutis/mjolnir](https://github.com/sdegutis/mjolnir)

</comment><comment><USER21> To the author: if this many people is confused about the difference between multi-pane and multi-column, your message isn't clear and it won't be to the developers you're asking either.

Explain exactly what you want (I read the blog post and it gave me no clue to that) and the developers might understand what you're asking.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. I'm planning a follow up with more detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I very often have a vertical split in vim, both panes with the same file. I can skip around the file and look at stuff in one while actually writing code in the other. Is that more or less what the op is asking for?

<comment><USER7> I assume he wants the impression that the file wraps around to the same column, with the buffers synchronised across the split.

Emacs does have that using follow-mode, I don't know if other editors do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Waste less space by turning your monitor to portrait mode. Not everything looks good on something intended for video.

</comment><comment><USER24> Visual Studio has great multi-columns. Just drag any tab and snap it into place.

Also, here's a simple solution: don't maximize windows. There's a lot of space on that screen that could be taken up by a browser, desktop icons, calculator, and any other thing you need instant access to. It's not multitasking(which I've heard is considered bad), if you're using all those windows to accomplish one task.

<comment><USER7> Visual Studio has tiling. So do almost all editors, so I'd assume that is not what the author is talking about. You can display files side-by-side, you can even display multiple sections of the same file side-by-side, but you can't have a single file view "wrap around" into columns.

Emacs does have that feature via follow-mode.

<comment><USER24> Oh, I see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You often will not need to see whole class to implement things.

cmd+f --> "string"

ctrl+g --> "line number"

in 4K tv example, you will need to focus your eyes too much that they will get tired after 30 minutes. Instead, zoom in and focus on the method you are dealing with.

you may use;

cmd+alt+2 --> for 2 columns layout in order to compare 2 files.

Your eyes are much more important than text editors.

Happy coding!

Edit: Examples are given from Sublime Text 3

</comment><comment><USER26> It's funny that so many people missed the point and assumed the author is clueless.

</comment><comment><USER27> 'CTRL-W v' in vim ;) Also, Visual Studio has vertical and horizontal tab groups, Xcode has "counterparts" where you can display 2 associated files side by side (for instance .c and its .h file), and tmux lets you setup vertical and horizontal splits for terminal sessions which is also very nice in combination with vim.

</comment><comment><USER28> Seriously, use emacs.

</comment><comment><USER29> Visual Studio - As many vertical tab groups as you need.

</comment><comment><USER30> Vim alone or vim+tmux is what you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is a joke right?

(Sublime has this feature baked in since day 0)

<comment><AUTHOR> Split pane/tiling? Can sublime layout single file in multiple columns? Note that I'm asking for a multi-column editor, not a multi-pane editor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seriously we've had those for decades.

Press 'Ctrl+x 3' in emacs and you've split your buffer in 2 columns. Now you got a multi-column editor.

</comment><comment><USER32> is that last screenshot intellij? If that's the case, the editor supports splitting windows [https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/help/splitting-and- unsplittin...](https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/help/splitting-and-unsplitting- editor-window.html)

<comment><USER7> Which is why I'd assume TFA is talking about something similar to Emacs's follow-mode[0], not mere vertical splits

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2797790](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2797790)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Heh, are there any editors which don't support multi-column editing?

<comment><AUTHOR> All of them, as far as I can tell, other than (apparently) emacs and vim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Seriously, you need to learn how to use your editor.</comment>


How to share links between a tablet and a computer, with out email. - <AUTHOR>

Hello every one I always had a problem of switching between the computer and a tablet, for example If i am reading an article on my tablet/phone and I would like to view it on my computer quickly. I don't want to type the link in the browser or email myself the link I would want it quickly. Is there a way to it???? <comment><USER2> Use Linkdrop.

[http://www.linkdrop.com](http://www.linkdrop.com)

It does a ton of things, but in this specific case you can easily send links to yourself with one click and then instantly access them on the other device.

Do this:

1.) Create a Linkdrop account

2.) Click the cog/settings icon next to "My Bookmarks" once you are logged in

3.) Drag the green "My Bookmarks" button/link to your bookmarks toolbar

That's pretty much all you need to do. It will add a "My Bookmarks" shortcut on your bookmarks bar in your browser. There's nothing to install.

Then whenever you are on a website that you want to look at on your other device just click that "My Bookmarks" button on your bookmarks bar and it will save the link automatically to your Linkdrop account with one click. You don't need to do anything else.

Then just open Linkdrop on your device (I have it as a shortcut on my phone) and click the link. It will be at the top of your collection.

Make it pretty simple. Visit website on computer... click "My Bookmarks"... open Linkdrop on device... click the link. Done. With just one click on the computer and one tap on the device.

You can also drag the "Drop" bookmarklet from Linkdrop to your bookmarks bar which will put a "Drop" button on your browser bookmark bar. Clicking this button when on a website will open a window allowing you to choose which folders to save the link to. This way you can choose "My Bookmarks" from the list and also any other folders, such as those shared with other people you've added. If you don't choose any from the list it will automatically save to "My Bookmarks". This way you can use the "Drop" button when you need to send to multiple people, but can still quickly send to "My Bookmarks" by just not selecting any folders. I have both the "Drop" button and a "My Bookmarks" button in my bookmarks bar. The "Drop" button can be found on the "help" page link or by choosing "Browser button" from the settings menu in the upper right of your account.

(NOTE: SSL protected pages won't allow the "My Bookmarks" bookmarklet to save the link since it is a third-party script from another site, so you need to use the standard "Drop" bookmarklet for SSL pages and choose "My Bookmarks" from the list. Two clicks instead of one, not a big deal, but this is because web browsers won't execute a script from linkdrop.com on another website when the other website is secured by https/SSL.)

So, you can create a custom bookmarklet for any folder you have to add links to it with one click and/or use the regular "Drop" button to open a list of folders to choose from.

You can also email links to your library by setting a username in Linkdrop and then emailing links to your username @linkdrop.com

This is great if you're on a mobile device and want to save a link or send it to your computer. Just click share on your mobile device, choose email, send to your username @linkdrop.com and the link shows up in your library in a few seconds.

Anyway, click "Show features and more information" on [http://www.linkdrop.com/](http://www.linkdrop.com/) to see everything it does.

It creates a backup screenshot of every link, indexes the text so you can search the full body of your bookmarks instead of just titles, lets you backup YouTube and other videos to your account, connects with Dropbox and backs up your library, screenshots, videos, etc to your Dropbox account, allows you to share with others, lets you send links to Facebook and Twitter, and lots of other stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> If they are both android, use chrome and you can share tabs between them.

<comment><AUTHOR> But what if they are not android? I have a PC and a Blackberry Z10 smartphone.

<comment><USER4> No problem -- just install Google Chrome on the Blackberry. Yes, I am joking -- but if it were possible, the problem would be solved.

Alternative -- write a daemon on each end of the circuit that updates a cloud database containing shared links. Then read the cloud shared-link database on each end. Such a scheme will work, but you have to write it yourself.</comment></comment></comment>


Just Making Money - A Compilation of DHH at Startup School 2008 - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHHXddS0m14

<comment><AUTHOR> For a presentation I needed an additional voice to convince the audience that building a sustainable business was preferable over striving for a massive exit. A short compilation of David Heinemeier Hansson talk at 2008 Startup School did the trick. With all the increased bubble talk it is worth watching again. You can find the full talk at <http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/b/259414909></comment>


Mobile app that connects local parents like a dating app. Parenting is easier - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
I just spent the better part of a year trying to create something I thought would make parenting so much easier. As a parent (of a 2 year old) I found it difficult and time consuming meeting other parents near me. Of course there was the random meeting at the playground, baby store or target - but I thought there had to be a better way to find and meet other local parents. Parents that I had some sort of commonality with…
After thinking it through, I decided to create an ios app. I called it Kinnecting. (www.kinnecting.com) ( KINnecting, get it?) A parent (you) logs on via Facebook and the app uses much of the info to connect and list other local parents near you. Finding mutual friends and interests with other parents as well. You can connect with them and chat with them in real time once they accept.
I figured if dating sites could use an algorithm to match singles, why couldn't I create an app that used an algorithm to match parents? It didn't exist, so I created it.  I'm not an engineer rather a techy Dad that wanted to create something that I thought parents could use. It was just so dang isolating being a parent - there had to be others that felt the same way.
Anyhow, I just launched it last week on the Apple App Store and I would love some of you fine folks (that are parents) to take it for a test drive. There are definitely some bugs, but I'm eager to hear any and all feedback from you techy-parents. I REALLY APPRECIATE IT.
You can go to http://www.kinnecting.com to download it and use the invite code: Hackernews
Please feel free to Kinnect with me directly on the app or in the comment thread below. ( or email   soam [at] kinnecting [dot] com )
So so so many thanks in advance.
S <comment><USER3> Awesome idea! But I am unable to sigup. Clicking Facebook gives me "Can't connect to this link right now".

(Edit) Worked on second attempt. Wish there was any other parent to Kinnect with.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for signing up - we're slowly ramping up our presence - <USER2> building a network of parents from the ground up... Starting in LA and NY... and already have pockets of parents in Michigan, Utah and Texas.

(Facebook login can be buggy - glad it worked)</comment></comment>


Understanding SAT by Implementing a Simple SAT Solver in Python (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://sahandsaba.com/understanding-sat-by-implementing-a-simple-sat-solver-in-python.html <comment><USER2> The practical significance of SAT is that almost all modern verification techniques are based on SAT solvers.

The algorithm he describes is not very interesting because it doesn't even implement unit-propagation. The idea with unit propagation is that if my current assignment has set a variable A=True and I also have a clause (~A + B) then B must be true for the instance to be satisfiable. Unit propagation is about propagating such implied constraints. If he'd implemented unit propagation along with his brute force search he'd have ended up with what is called the DPLL algorithm for SAT.

Modern SAT solvers are actually even smarter and have two important improvements over DPLL: (i) Conflict-Driven Clause Learning (CDCL) which introduced a very cool technique called non-chronological backtracking, and (ii) 2-literal watching which is an extremely clever data structure for efficient unit propagation. Both of these ideas are generalizable to many other versions of constraint solving (e.g. sudoko, router search, etc.) so they are well worth learning.

CDCL was introduced by this paper: [https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=244560](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=244560) while 2-literal watching is from the Chaff solver: [https://www.princeton.edu/~chaff/publication/DAC2001v56.pdf](https://www.princeton.edu/~chaff/publication/DAC2001v56.pdf).

<comment><USER3> It is said that SAT is very useful for automatically solving complex problem where you don't know the solution.

But deep learning neural network are also said to be used when there's no good solution known.

It's the first time I see the symmetry. When should I use a SAT vs an ANN?

Other than SAT and ANN, are there other kind or technology that automatically solve/approximate solutions?

<comment><USER4> SAT is best when there is one true logical answer. ANN are best when you want "best advice".

A good guide (in my experience) -- with SAT while the answer is hard to find it's easy to check (like a Sudoku, or building a timetable with no clashes), while ANN give answers where verifying the answer isn't easy to perform computstionally (if I give you a translation of a text into Latin, verifying it is about as hard as just making a new one from scratch)

<comment><USER3> I am trying to implement a natural language (English) logic checker. It would detect [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy)

How could a SAT/SMT help me in this task? I know it's already used for math theorem checking.

E.g All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrate is mortal. I have currently two way to solve syllogisms

One hard-coded Disjonction of cases (but not flexible enough for non canonical forms of syllogisms)

And a flexible one that generate a graph of transitivity.

Both are 100% accurate.

Could SAT/SMT give me a third way of determining if the conclusion is logically valid? (not non sequitur)

<comment><USER4> This is exactly what SAT and SMT are for.

SMT is some extra stuff on top of SAT. There are a few frameworks which extend SAT. I'd look at minizinc, it is a fairly easy to use language which can produce SAT (and SMT, and others) as output. Often encoding things in SAT directly gets arkward.

<comment><USER3> Thank you but as you say, encoding is limiting. SMT are a progress versus SAT. But I believe I would need an SMT that take a graph and rules as input and verify if the graph or parts of the graph satisfy the rules/constraints. And output me the indexes of the satisfied parts of the graph. I believe such a thing does not yet exist.

<comment><USER5> This is what model checkers are for. They internally (might) use SAT solvers to reason over transition graphs. The general problem for model checkers is of this form:

System description: Transition system like automata or a guarded command language which induces a graph.

System Property: Stated in some logic, CTL/LTL

Output: Satisfied, or Unsatisfied with a counter example (usually a path in the graph which is false).

If your problem can fit into such a framework, have a look at model checkers: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_model_checking_tools](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_model_checking_tools)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wrote a dpll (the standard algorithm for SAT) Implementation in Haskell, that's also pretty straight forward: [https://github.com/maxmunzel/dpll/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/maxmunzel/dpll/blob/master/README.md)

Feel free to ask any questions.

<comment><USER7> Thanks! I did a port of it and this could be my way in to discovering more about SAT solvers. (Doing ports is one of my preferred means of jumpstarting my motivation for more complex areas of study).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm confused why he brings up the four color theorem, since a 4-coloring of a planar graph can be determined in polynomial time. And he also makes it sound like the theorem hasn't been proven yet.

<comment><USER9> I think it's fine taking this as a constraint problem. It just means, you know beforehand that there is a solution. Also, if the underlying problem is in P, chances are the SAT instance is not that hard.

Also: have you looked at the poly-algorithm for 4-coloring? I rather write the SAT instance by hand...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you liked that you might like this. It's a DPLL† SAT Solver based on George Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form implemented in Python.

[http://joypy.osdn.io/notebooks/Correcet_Programming.html#Dav...](http://joypy.osdn.io/notebooks/Correcet_Programming.html#Davis%E2%80%93Putnam%E2%80%93Logemann%E2%80%93Loveland-\(DPLL\)-algorithm- SAT-Solver)

One of the interesting things about it is that you don't have to put formulas into conjunctive normal form.

† [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Putnam%E2%80%93L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%E2%80%93Putnam%E2%80%93Logemann%E2%80%93Loveland_algorithm)</comment>


I Am a Recruiter (a.k.a Spammer) at Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://the.devway.xyz/i-am-a-recruiter-a-k-a-spammer-at-amazon-6520ea0b031#.4u67smfmh <comment><USER2> People in this thread complaining about "humble bragging", "You're lucky to get recruiter emails", "People wish they were in your position" are missing the point.

This is NOT a "All these amazing companies are trying to throw money at me but I don't want it" it's a "These people keep offering me a job I don't want, given their requirements, and I'm not at all guaranteed it even if I do accept their requirements". This is akin to getting credit card offers in the mail IMHO. Getting recruiter "spam" (calls or email) is 99.99% of the time NOT an indication that you are a great developer but rather you have made some sort of an email list.

Sure if companies were contacting me with better jobs that I currently have or jobs that I'm a shoe-in for (ie. they've done their research on me and they want ME not just someone who has certain keywords on their LinkedIn profile) then I'd be super happy and a blog post about that would be humble brag but this is different. These recruiters spam thousands of people with the same form-letter so they can pull in a handful and get a percentage of their salary for the first 3/6/12 months they are employed at their new job.

<comment><USER3> That's still not the complete picture.

My first job was at a company with no visibility to mainstream tech firms, doing relatively uninteresting stuff, getting paid far less. I had to do hours of LinkedIn homework and cold-applying to get any single interview, and _that 's still no guarantee of a job either_.

Now I'm at somewhere with a recognizable name and I get recruiter emails quite frequently. I could set up an interview with a five minute phone call in response. Sure, any of those jobs may still be a bad fit, or I could fail the interview, but it's about 50x easier to even get to that stage now.

So if you're complaining about getting recruiter contacts, don't be surprised when the people not in that world have little sympathy.

(Amazon does seem particularly messy and disorganized, though. I get quite a few contacts from them from various departments in locations I've told them before (for other positions) that I'm not interested in...)

<comment><USER4> My company is not recognizable, and I get Amazon and IBM emails like clockwork.

<comment><USER5> Do you by any chance do web/cloud stuff? The company I work for is fairly recognizable and I've been there for 10 years but the few recruitment calls I get are for a one line entry in my resume that said that I did one small web related project.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, my job is java on the backend, JS on the frontend, though it's ExtJS which is neither hip nor good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's the bullshit that gets me. The lies.

"I read your profile and I think you'd be perfect for this role" \- Amazon recruiter, who didn't notice I'd stopped working at Amazon 4 weeks before, as clearly indicated on the profile they 'read'.

They aren't even outside of the norm. Technical recruiters are about 90% bullshitters who would say anything at all if it meant they got you into an interview. I'm with my current company in large part because our recruiter is in the other 10%.

<comment><USER7> My favorites are the ones that reference my joke GitHub projects (like evil.css [https://github.com/tlrobinson/evil.css/](https://github.com/tlrobinson/evil.css/) ) as if they're the pinnacle of my achievements (I have actually worked on notable open source projects, but they're not hosted under my personal GitHub account...)

Facebook:

 _I came across your Github profile and I noticed your long-stack-traces and evil.css projects have been gaining quite some traction on Github._

Fitbit:

 _P.S. Cool to see long-stack-traces and evil-css getting some love!_

unnnamed venture-funded startup:

 _I found your profile on Github and I like all the work you 've done with JavaScript and node (and especially evil.css)_

This one actually seemed genuine:

 _Oh man, I remember evil.css. A guy I used to work with set it as my Safari user stylesheet, then forgot about it. I don 't use Safari all the time, so it took me a while to realize something was wrong, and even longer for that guy to remember what he'd done to my machine. So uh... thanks for that. :P_

<comment><USER6> But look, look, they _did_ read something about you! They aren't 100% full of shit! It's an actual, personalized message and not 'hey {candidate_name}!'

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that's mostly my reaction too.

OTOH, there's no reason that sort of email can't be generated from a list of templates either.

My favorite was when a recruiter obliquely referenced something I'd once tweeted complaining about recruiter spam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While Amazon has a lot of tech and Internet savvy individuals, and Bezos himself is quite sharp, they also have a large cadre of business executives who come from decidedly non-tech backgrounds like Walmart and similar. This is the case in a great many, if not the majority, of large "tech" companies. These executives are the ones who talk out one side of their mouth about wanting "the best and the brightest" and "doing great things" but out the other side of their mouth stick to "best practices" and "proven methods." They are the ones who block remote work. They're the ones who ignore the research and push open floor plans and put emphasis on the number of hours a person works rather than the fruits of their work, load days with meetings and interruptions, etc.

They're the ones who have a wealth of knowledge about business management practices. Business management practices developed for manufacturing. And never adapted to address thought-work. In Amazons case, this leads to them having a great deal of policies that are hostile to tech workers. A coworker of mine who has several kids was talking with Amazon and even considering the move to Seattle. But then he asked them about the work schedule. They were not coy. They let him know in no uncertain terms that he would be expected to work very long hours in perpetuity, and that if he desired "free time" to be with his family, he was 'not a good fit'.

These practices lead Amazon to churn through people very quickly, leading to their constant need for more people, driving their recruiters to become proficient spammers.

<comment><USER10> That is terrible. It's extremely team-dependent at Amazon, whether you get the "you have to work long hours forever" team or the "I don't care if you put in your timeoff, just live your life outside of work while still getting your shit done" team. There are many possibilities, and recruiters aren't trying to match on what's important to you as a candidate, they're trying to fill the square hole with any peg they can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Usually I ignore recruiter spam, but a while back I got this one that started off with the line

> I recently came across your blog (one picture of your cat had me dying).

I'm fairly certain the recruiter did not read the whole blog post [1] because it is a eulogy for my dead cat. Normally I'm fairly calm and try to be understanding and empathetic especially for people just doing their job, but this put me in such a white hot rage. Not only did I email the recruiter back telling them off, but this was the kind of rage where you are no longer acting impulsively, but have come back around the other side to being calm and rational in your rage, so I tracked them down on google, figured out who their boss was and CC'd them on it. I felt a little bad about it, latter I've had shitty sales jobs too, but man rule 1 page 1 of bland icebreaker email openers has got to be 'make sure it's not a god damn eulogy'.

1\. [http://calvinmetcalf.com/post/94533627852/a-thousand-days- of...](http://calvinmetcalf.com/post/94533627852/a-thousand-days-of-kublai)

<comment><USER12> Maybe I'm missing something. Why did you get angry at the recruiter for complimenting a picture of your cat? The recruiter clearly saw you have affection for your cat and was trying to be personable and pay respect to your late furry friend.

<comment><USER13> "had me dying" is usually an expression meaning something equivalent to "rofl."

So it's fine to say you found a picture of the op's now deceased cat to be amusing and adorable, but maybe don't use the word "dying" in the context of a dead cat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > I want to remind the Amazon human resource and recruitment team that you > have many talented software developers in your company. And, these folks can > create a database of do-not-want-to-move candidates for you, and you can ask > your recruiting team not to spam them! A simple cross join!

That'd be an anti-join, not a cross join.

On a more serious note, there should be a "Do Not Call List" for email addresses. It'd be damn near impossible to implement for everything as I doubt Nigerian princes will bother checking it, but a "name and shame" campaign against companies and their recruiting affiliates that ignore it would work.

Course the other problem is that having such a list and such a service also provides a way to verify the validity of an email address.

<comment><USER15> Interesting thoughts. At least they can have a blacklist. Like every other websites that you can unsubscribe, it should be a way to unsubscribe from Amazon recruiters.

<comment><USER9> Actually, they probably DO have a blacklist... the question is... what would it take to get put on it? Asking doesn't work... perhaps being aggressively, crazily bigoted and abusive?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I interviewed at Amazon once. A few months later, I was contacted by another recruitment agency completely unrelated to Amazon, using the custom email address I'd registered only with Amazon (I use it to catch people selling my email addresses).

I asked the recruiter contact at Amazon why they had sold my resume/details, or if they had a security issue. Of course they said they'd look into it (still waiting for that response a few years later...).

It is shocking that a company of Amazon's size with so much confidential information can't keep a hold on private recruitment data. I refuse to interview with them again based upon their complete disregard for my personal information.

</comment><comment><USER17> I really hate how easily they just waste your time.

Amazon recruiter: "Hey let's set up a call"

call happens, then they actually check into my background

Amazon recruiter: "uhh let me check on some things and call you back".

Never hear back. Just the blatant brazenness and stupidity of the entire exercise. You had time to coordinate and schedule a call out of my and your day, but couldn't even be bothered to look into my skills for 5 minutes? How does this help you recruit? How does this help Amazon? Like I get it, I don't have the pedigree of a Google background, cool, why even bother with a call?

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't mind getting such emails. Every now on then there's a free happy hour invitation in them. I try to attend as many as I can. Usually they are good opportunities to see what companies in town are up to (and of course free beer and snacks). Some manager at the happy hour ends up asking me 'Why are you looking for a change?' to which I reply 'I am not. Your company invited me so I came. Now it is up to you to convince me to interview for your company'.

<comment><USER9> "Make game of that which makes as much of thee."

Words to live by. I am considering getting them as my first tattoo at 38.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I first interviewed with Amazon two years ago, and I got no offer. It was a good experience but it just felt (both to me and to the hiring manager) that I interviewed with the wrong team. One month later, a different business held another recruiting event in the city where I lived then, which would have been a much better match, but whatever.

Since then I've been contacted from time to time. I initiated the process with a team coming to Berlin in December. I should've known better and asked them right away about other teams coming in town later :) My mistake. Anyway the first message I got was slightly inaccurate about the job location, but I decided to give it a try. I took their automated online assignment (no, not the infamous proctor.io one they give to interns/entry-levels), did well (it was reasonable), then had a call with the technical recruiter and was left to set the interview date with the recruiting event coordinator.

A couple days later, not one, but two _managers_ from AWS contact me on LinkedIn to tell me about an upcoming recruiting event in Berlin. I reply to the first one, tell him upfront I started the process with another business team already, but that AWS would be a better match (given the job location, and I'm not going to lie, AWS are the cool kids and I like their products). He says there's no problem, I can cancel my interviews with the other team, and just transfer the process to the AWS recruiting event. So I tried to do that.

The recruiting event is going on as we speak, I believe. I'm still waiting for the AWS technical recruiter to get in touch. I reminded the manager 3 times and eventually gave up. Sorry Amazon, I'm not that desperate. I'm not a fan of companies that have a generic interviewing process, no matter the team you're applying for. I think it makes sense that each business team is running its own recruiting pipeline. But come on, you can do a better job than that.

</comment><comment><USER20> Do what I do. Just accept it, let them fly you in, enjoy a day of a nice hotel and some interviews. I'm not particularly serious about accepting, but they don't seem serious about listening to me so, hell, I just gave up and enjoy the ride.

Make sure you keep your receipts and bill them, though. Eat out at a nice restaurant!

And if you flub the interviews, who cares. It's great practice.

<comment><USER21> I've discovered my secret to doing well on interviews is to not give a shit. No idea why it works.

<comment><USER9> In-person interactions inherently come with a litany of drawbacks due to the fact that we're human beings. One of them is that confidence makes you look better than nervousness or any kind of desire (certainly better than desperation). That's regardless of your skills. Other irrelevant things like how tall you are, how symmetric your face and dress is, how charismatic you are, etc all take precedence. Even if you're aware of these flaws in yourself, and attempt to compensate for them, you will fail. Not giving a shit would be a great strategy. As would being tall.

<comment><USER21> My problem is I don't have much control over it. If you're interviewing me, and I'm doing exceptionally well, it most likely means I _do not care_ if you offer me a job or not.

This of course means that I've only held jobs I wasn't particularly interested in. Well, at least at the time I interviewed for them -- some have turned out better than expected :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Worst a recruiter can do is call your company's main line and ask to speak to you (found your name on LinkedIn). And then they're like: "Hi Jay, how are you?" like you're best buddies.

</comment><comment><USER23> > What bothers me is the fact that, on average, every three months they > approach to the same potential passive candidate for the same type of > position!

This isn't at all exclusive to Amazon. I get these all the time from other places. Bad recruiters abound inside _and_ outside of Amazon

</comment><comment><USER24> If only there was a way to filter emails you don't want to receive.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm conflicted. OTOH I have no desire to move most places jobs would like me to move (I like the culture and people where I live, and generally _don 't_ elsewhere), and the best years of my life were spent on an all-remote team. But …

Y'see, the _most productive_ years of my life have been spent with on-site teams. We've often had some remote teammates, and uniformly they have been less productive and less connected than the on-site folks (despite being excellent colleagues and hard workers). I think that digital connexion really isn't the same as analogue connexion, in much the same way that an ereader isn't as good as a book. I wish that weren't the case; I _really_ do. But I think that it's true, regardless of my wishes.

Now, as an employer would I rather have the very best talent working remotely, and hence less productively, or not as good talent working on-site, and hence productively? I don't know the answer to that.

Should employers be flexible about remote working (e.g. WFH, even medium-term remote working)? Definitely. Should they bring full-time remote workers onsite regularly? Definitely. If you're saving $10,000/year on office space, you can spend $4,000/year on quarterly trips to bring folks in for a few days.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yea, Amazon's the most spammy of any known company, but the one that really blows me away is Apple. They occasionally send me recruiter spam at my work email. The work email that they got from its team membership in my employer's iOS developer account. That's pretty brazen.

<comment><USER27> I have had a developer account for many years. That account is a member of several teams. I also have other unrelated developer accounts. None of them have _ever_ gotten recruiting spam. I have never even heard of recruiting spam via this channel.

I don't know how a recruiter got your email but I doubt it was by trolling registered developers. If so they violated Apple's policies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> No, remote work would not work for Amazon. There is synchronisation cost that you need to pay when working local+remote. For large organisation it is already hard to get anything done (politics/security/bullshit/ego).

Cold email/call is really successful strategy. There nothing unusual about getting hundreds of emails. For requiters is better to send 40 cold emails than one crafted and build upon relationship.

Finally as a receiver you can still benefit. Because you can send cold responses. You directly ask about compensation. You can instruct requiters to search for specific technology/team/location. There is plenty of more shady uses.. baiting/bidding/spying etc..

</comment><comment><USER21> I'll often respond to a recruiter with "Does this position support remote work? I don't want to relocate." You know, on the off-chance I can land me one of those mythical work-from-home jobs.

Most of them don't even bother to write back.

</comment><comment><USER29> At my local startup accelerator I find that AMZN has contacted many other devs in my area. I talked to the hiring manager, they are a nice bunch of folks working on a revolutionary problem but, alas, I am not moving to Seattle either.

<comment><USER30> Not so sure about the "nice bunch of folks" bit either. Every story I've ever heard about working at Amazon is pretty much a nightmare tale.

<comment><USER29> At a big company different people have different experiences. Your manager and work group make a big difference.

I'm sure you can find somebody for whom working at Amazon is a living hell, and I am sure you can find somebody as happy as a clam.

As for the people I know there overall I have a positive impression but a lot of that comes from practicing vendor management (where it helps to have a PMA) An old Oracle DBA taught me the power of getting what you pay for from vendors thus I've invested a lot in getting good at getting service from AWS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> From what I hear, Amazon and AWS have totally different cultures (AWS being much better)

<comment><USER32> This has been my experience as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Well, the recruiting process is a funnel.

You will not have a big output at the end of the funnel if the input isn't big itself.

So they want as much people as possible going through that process. Each step needs to be cost-efficient enough as well.

</comment><comment><USER34> I interviewed at Amazon (bad experience), got rejected (long story), and then TWO MONTHS LATER got contacted by an Amazon recruiter: "We need people like you!"

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

<comment><USER35> Rejected after a full day of interviews, contacted by no fewer than six different Amazon recruiters in the next three months.

Honestly it makes Amazon look _bad_ , because it implies they're both disorganized and desperate for warm bodies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The reason they do it is because it works.

<comment><USER37> but does it work better than any number of other strategies they might use? maybe the reason they do it is because they're not very good at recruiting and just go with an obvious method that isn't completely ineffective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've threatened spamming recruiters with the CANSPAM act. I have no idea if I have a legal ground to do it, but it certainly stopped these particular recruiters from contacting me again, at least for now.

<comment><USER39> I've got a bit of a different tactic you might take if the CANSPAM thing stops working. I keep a copy of a form letter on Google Drive that I send back on _any_ suggestion of a "job opportunity" on LinkedIn.

>>> START FORM <<<

Hi <name>,

Thank you for thinking of me for this opportunity. In order to save you time, I've created an initial checklist of information that I've found to be useful for evaluating whether I'd be a good fit for your position:

* What is the pay scale for the position? (If the pay is based on the resume of the candidate - what is the highest pay scale that the company could offer?)

* What is the name of the company?

* What is the title of the position?

* Does this position allow for remote work?

* What technologies and tools do the company use? (If unknown, leave blank.)

* Is there a job posting I can refer to for required/desired skills for the position so that I can make sure I'm a good match?

With the additional context provided by these questions I can give you a definitive answer on whether I'd be a good match to your position.

>>> END FORM <<<

It's a bit of an obnoxious thing to do but most of the non-affiliated recruiters will give up at the outset to avoid the chance of someone applying at the company behind their back (and thereby eliminating their hiring bonus payday) and corporate recruiters will often stop after they find out they can't satisfy my job environment requirements.

<comment><USER40> I pulled this a lot - I just totally refused to move forward without the name of the company - if you want my resume, you need to tell me who you want me to work for.

<comment><USER41> I actually got a "GO TO HELL" response when I did this once. After he told me what the company was.

Yes, I forwarded the e-mail chain on to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I kind of like to look at these kinds of posts as if it were a very attractive person complaining that so many people are hitting on them. There are a lot of people who would do anything to be in your position having recruiters constantly offering them interviews.

<comment><USER43> When in fact it is a nuisance, this isn't really the kind of problem you want. You can only have one full time employment or contract at once (this is what recruiters want 99.99% of the time); ipso facto if you get these offers constantly you will turn down almost all of them. For me I've always relied on personal connections to guide me on whether I want to take an offer (for interview or job), regardless of whether I have had recruiters chasing me or not. If you are relying on personal connections to gather this information and/or offers then the recruiter adds very little value.

<comment><USER44> This _problem_ you mention is easily solvable by having a dedicated email address for a job process, period.

That way you can safely forget about the existence of said email once you find a job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Recruiters are salespeople. Treat them as such.

</comment><comment><USER46> humble brag, move along

<comment><USER2> Being contacted by a recruiter is nothing special or anything to brag about unless you get a personalized email. I have gotten maybe 2 personalized emails ever from a recruiter and in that case they were internal recruiters (not outsourced). They took the time to research me and mention specific project I've worked on. In this case it sounds like he was getting "cold-emails" which I get (and my co-workers) every week or two. I sympathize with the author, it's annoying to tell a company (TekSystems in my case) that I don't want to move and I'm only interested in specific jobs and a salary equal to or greater than X and then have them continue to call and email me with jobs where I'd make 1/3-1/2 less than I currently make (and I've told them how much I make).

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> What is the problem exactly ?

Dont want to recieve emails ? Filter them out.

Dont want to be hired by Amazon, send a restraining order and what not, contact their HR directly, or what not but ranting on medium will not solve the authors problem.

This makes me question if the author is secretly just clickbaiting for attention

<comment><USER15> This is the author. I respond to every single Amazon recruiters and told them my reasons why I am not considering to work for Amazon (specifically, relocating). I posted online, because I believe Amazon deserves a better process for head hunting. Maybe it solve the problem, maybe not.

<comment><USER48> If you are responding to the emails and are looking for a practical way to (politely) express your frustration, consider CCing every Amazon recruiter who has contacted you on your "no thanks" emails to new Amazon recruiters. It may get a message across when your recruiter receives a response that they can see addressed to 20+ of their coworkers which begins "As I have expressed to your colleagues, [...]".

<comment><USER49> Most people want to move on with their lives. Maintaining list of Amazon recruiters is not exactly appealing way to spend time.

<comment><USER15> Actually, I have one :) I did that once. No response from that recruiter after that. But a few months later, another one spammed!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


CVE-2016-4631 APPLE IMAGE I/O API TILED TIFF REMOTE CODE EXECUTION VULNERABILITY - <AUTHOR> http://www.talosintelligence.com/reports/TALOS-2016-0171/ <comment><USER2> DON'T SCREAM!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry I simply copy pasted and shortened a bit, we're not supposed to edit titles as submitters. The info under details is a fun read.

<comment><USER3> It's possible to make small corrections to the titles. In particular fix typos, remove words like "awesome" and "mind blowing" and change the case of the words.

I'm sure the mods would not complain if you change the title to "CVE-2016-4631 Apple Image I/O API Tiled Tiff Remote Code Execution Vulnerability"

The problem is if you add some editorializing like:

"CVE-2016-4631 Apple Image I/O API Tiled Tiff Remote Code Execution Stupid Vulnerability"

"CVE-2016-4631 Apple Image I/O API Tiled Tiff Remote Code Execution Vulnerability again for the third time in this wek"

"CVE-2016-4631 Apple Image I/O API are morons"

"CVE-2016-4631 You can't believe the bug in Apple Image I/O Api"

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty sad all the discussion is about this rather than the great write-up in that link plus the others from Tyler Bohan recently. I'll be sure to change the case next time, if there is a next time. I believed putting the CVE number first was thoughtful at least.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Python Weekly Job Board - <AUTHOR>

If you have Python related position open, you can post it on Python Weekly Job Board - http://jobs.pythonweekly.com/ for FREE. The additional benefit of posting there is that your job listing will be included in Python Weekly  newsletter - http://www.pythonweekly.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link, <http://jobs.pythonweekly.com/></comment>


Show HN: Purge old kernels and headers on Linux using apt-get - <AUTHOR> Hacker News today features an Ubuntu story with sysadmins asking how to purge old kernels and headers by using apt. This is necessary maintenance on some systems because /boot fills up.
Here's how we do it:

    apt-get remove --purge 'linux-image-[0-9].*' linux-image-$(uname -r)+

    apt-get remove --purge 'linux-headers-[0-9].*' linux-headers-$(uname -r)+
 Complete script with comments here; we welcome feedback and also pull requests.
https://github.com/SixArm/sixarm_apt_scripts/blob/master/apt-purge-old-kernels-and-headers <comment><USER2> apt-get autoremove does the same and it's built into Ubuntu</comment>


Ask HN: What if Google decides to charge for Analytics? - <AUTHOR>

I wonder why Google doesn't charge for Google Analytics. What would be the consequences if it becomes a paid product?<p>I guess it would make a lot of money for Google and don't know why it is free. What I am missing here? <comment><USER2> From what I can tell, the way that they've integrated analytics, with e-commerce analytics, the entire service is a direct tie-in to adwords.

Google Analytics is such a complete tool, when integrated with adwords and the power of google search, anyone who doesn't have full-time to dedicate to managing paid search and add networks could just easily integrate into the google walled garden and free up a good portion of their day to do other stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> When you use Google Analytics you are giving them a treasure trove of useful surfing habits they can use in their other products.

So they are not likely to charge for it anytime soon.</comment>


Nokia 3310 3G as a podcast player - <AUTHOR> http://prog.re/blog/2020-09-13.html <comment><USER3> I just rediscovered my 5th Gen iPod Video...after a $12 battery swap, I have uninterrupted high fidelity music in over the ear headphones has been a revelation.

-No interruptions from IMs, SMS, Facebook, Linked In, Slack, GCN, Ring, Nest, Apple+, Farmville, Solitaire, or any other application that thinks it must get a hold of your attention

-It's a timecapsule of 2005 and before - When I curated my music myself...I had to like a song, and then Star it to make it to my player

-Works everywhere, completely offline

-I found myself REALLY listening to music again...and the notifications I needed while WFH generally had a visual component, too, so I could opt to respond to that meeting or join that Teams Chat without necessarily interrupting the music.

-It dropped me back into iTunes Music (or ITunes...or Music...or whatever it's branded now) which is a much bigger view of my music that you just don't get looking at an iPhone screen.

I'm pretty sure it's a two week distraction (because holy-smokes, that cable catches on EVERYTHING) but it's a fun one.

<comment><USER4> > No interruptions from IMs, SMS, Facebook, Linked In, Slack, GCN, Ring, Nest, > Apple+, Farmville, Solitaire, or any other application that thinks it must > get a hold of your attention

Unwanted notifications are not a vice like snacking or the like where obviously you get some endorphins every time you do it and therefore you can get addicted, and thus it makes sense to "restrict access to sources of food" when you are trying to avoid it (e.g. self-control issues).

No. _Unwanted_ notifications is something that is by definition not possible to get addicted to, so I really don't get this point of view.

Just turn them off, dammit. Like you can in any operating system ever designed (so far) and then they are off. There's no need to go around fishing for a device which has no support for notifications.

But I've seen a shitton of people saying they prefer this "dumbed down" device or the like for precisely this reason, which is absurd. Battery life, I get. Less maintenance, I might get. But "avoiding notifications", I don't get.

I have a cheap no-name Android device as bed-side alarm clock since they are actually _cheaper_ than (off-shelf) bed-side alarm clocks and I can write my own alarm clock program for them (a big plus). I put it on Don't disturb mode the day I booted it for the first time. Never got a notification. Never woke me up in the middle of the night (unwantedly ;P ).

<comment><USER5> > Unwanted notifications are not a vice like snacking or the like where > obviously you get some endorphins every time you do it and therefore you can > get addicted

Except they're not unwanted, at least not completely.

Sometimes apps don't let you decide what you'll get sent, so that you get a mix of wanted and unwanted notifications. Other times one just can't resist looking at them.

You can argue as to what brain chemistry causes this to resemble an addiction, but you can't argue that they have an addictive, attention hogging effect for many.

> Just turn them off, dammit.

The ease by which this is reversible and the habit of checking apps is the problem with this solution.

> self-control issues

This is such an unrealistic expectation. This is always the go-to argument as well - pinning the blame on the user.

Thousands of engineers design these apps to be addictive. Most people aren't going to win against that.

Furthermore, few other things in life are designed to do hog attention like these apps are. They can only be compared to slot machines which clearly have a strong effect on people.

<comment><USER4> > Except they're not unwanted, at least not completely.

I explicitly called them "Unwanted" because the post I'm replying to mentions getting a plain old iPod (with no notifications whatsoever) as an alternative. If you _want_ these notifications, then my argument does not apply.

<comment><USER5> > If you _want_ these notifications, then my argument does not apply.

Then your argument has a very minimal reach and doesn't apply to the post you replied to.

Few apps have irrelevant and useless notifications. They usually have some relevance or use.

Many apps, especially social media, play on reward centers to form addictive behavior. They are wanted in the sense that they are irresistible and are sometimes useful.

The realization that they are troublesome makes them unwanted _while still being irresistible_.

<comment><USER4> In which way it does not apply to the post I replied to? In which way would using a plain iPod -which now filters out all notifications, including the ones you actually want to receive- help if you have wanted notifications? That's the idiotic part. There is no "wanted" notification in this context. The poster just generically finds all notifications useless.

If you are an addict to Facebook, I could understand buying a phone-network- capable device without the ability to install Facebook (the iPod isn't), or a child phone, or using parental controls on yourself (seen it); to enhance your self-control while still allowing access to work/family/whatever notifications. However, if you just don't want to receive notifications whatsoever, what's the point? There's no addiction here. You are talking about a different topic entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use an old Moto E4 as my "entertainment center". I just removed all the extra apps I've installed over the months of usage, kept only Spotify, Google Podcasts, and the Action Blocks apps.

The phone is always connected to wifi and a Bluetooth speaker. ALL notifications are off so when I fire it to play a podcast or song, nothing interrupts me.

Also, I use this phone as my alarm clock. Using my daily driver phone was problematic as I usually end up opening facebook/twitter/reddit when I wake and wasting valuable time. The Moto E has none of those.

</comment><comment><USER7> > I was on reddit (back when the mobile website worked)

Those were the days, i.reddit.com is still sort of ok on mobile devices

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess, but I have sort of lost interest in reddit anyway. They can do whatever they like to their webpage, I'm out. The only thing I really miss are the in-jokes that HN really don't like. I drift more and more to youtube instead, I even read the comments there sometimes (!).

<comment><USER7> > I even read the comments there sometimes (!)

Some of those youtube comments are pure gold IMO. I guess youtube has its fair share of toxic comments as well (as most social media), but it's somewhat strange that youtube got famous for its horrid comment sections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > BankID used to be only a bank issued smart card and a special little card > reader.

If you had the right bank. If you had the wrong bank it was a Windows-only application with the kind of yankiness that screams "I have more holes than a Swiss cheese".

I may not particularly like mobile bankid (mostly for the same reason I didn't like desktop bankid), but I have a lot more control over what permissions it has, at least.

<comment><USER9> It bothers me that these apps like BankID don't work on rooted phones. I should be allowed to control and choose what I share with any app.

To use this, I had to install it on a dedicated older phone, and I'm running out of older phones to run stuff on...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For a long time I used a Nokia 104, rather than getting a smart phone, it was great. For work I got an iPhone, and there's no way I'm carrying two phones, so the Nokia ends up in the draw of mystery tech. Now four years later I really want to go back, but I still need a few apps for work and MobilePay has become a must have in Denmark. The first phone companies have started shutting down 2G so in a year or so I can't even be sure that the old phone will work. There's still not total 3G, 4G or 5G coverage so I also can't be sure the iPhone will work.

It's becoming extremely difficult to not wanting a smart phone. We heading towards an App-only world.

<comment><USER11> On the app-front I've actually noticed an opposite direction in that I'm using fewer and fewer of these by moving more and more to web-versions of the services offered by apps. What apps I'm still using are mostly free software, often connected to services under my own control. I don't use apps because I don't see the need for all those app providers to get access to more of my data than necessary for the services they render _and_ because I don't like the Balkanisation caused by the app world. While Android and iOS may divide more or less the entire mobile world between them I want to keep the door open to new contenders, preferably of the free software variety. An app-only world is an effective blockade for new contenders and as such only serves the incumbents.

I live in Sweden where as you probably know electronic payments are big, with Swish being the overweight gorilla in this field. I don't use Swish or any other electronic payment platform yet I still manage to get around, cash still works where it matters. My reasoning for using cash is the same as before, I like my privacy and don't see the need for the bank and the state and several advertisers to know I bought object A at location B from vendor C for price D at date and time E. Cash makes this possible, electronic payments do the opposite.

<comment><USER12> You will see several post from me regarding native vs mobile Web leaning on the native side, but the fact is that unless one is doing games or requires access to hardware specific capabilities, most stuff is actually doable as web app, specially with Google increasingly pushing ChromeOS features into Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have one of these candy bar style Nokia phones, and its surprisingly good, but warning to the user: they don't work on 3G..

This isn't a problem unless your provider no longer supports 2G which is the case with the aptly named "3" provider. (Both in Sweden and the UK).

Getting a payG SIM card for another provider isn't too much of a pain but I bought this as a backup for my main phone and only noticed it in an emergency. :(

Other nitpick quirks include: being able to unlock the device with one keypress (when locking is at least 2 keypresses) and no discernible way to update the firmware.

<comment><USER14> I'm pretty sure the OP's modern feature phone, which is _named_ the "3310 3G" after all, works on 3G.

The OP author seems to be Swedish, too.

For an actual old phone though, sure it'd be an issue.

<comment><USER13> I'm talking about the 2017 re-release. But it seems there is a new(er) 3G variant too!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Something old featurephones also had was tactile buttons. Can be controlled without looking. I miss that.

<comment><USER16> I was in high school when the first iPhone came out. Before any of us got a smartphone I had a friend who knew T9 so well that she could type out an entire SMS to someone while in class without looking at the screen. So she would reach down in her pocket and pick up her phone and she'd be holding the phone by her side and she'd be typing out a message but she'd be looking at the blackboard, the teacher, and her desk while typing so you couldn't even tell that she was typing from where the teacher was standing. I found that pretty impressive. I asked her about it and she said it was no biggie, she'd just been typing a lot and therefore she had learned how to do this without really trying to learn it.

<comment><USER17> My kid brother and a couple of his friends had this skill, too. Between that and being thoroughly spanked in multiplayer games, and taught the joys of Homestarrunner by them, I felt really old. (Early 20s then.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I sometimes go camping or hillwalking and although an Apple Watch and iPhone can be kept going for a few days with a battery bank, it's not entirely ideal.

So i bought a 3310 or 3330 i forget which. It even came with headphones and I put on my old gshock watch.

Signal reception is not as good as an iphone but otherwise pretty ideal for hillwalking and maybe an overnight camp.

I can't really fault the cheap nokias for that use case. I was so impressed that I decided to try using it as a daily for a week and see how i got on - <USER2> was going through a periodic prune of notifications in my life at the time, a digital detox so to speak.

Need to quickly transfer money? Nope. Phone banking is stupidly slow.

Want to check the weather? Yeah but no.

Want to search your email for that thing. Nope.

Hey quick, snap a picture of that. Nope.

Todo list? Nope.

Calendar? Nope.

Lookup a password or pin code? Nope.

Read something. Nope.

Take a quick note.

Check the price of something.

How far away is X?

No. No. No.

I didn't even last a full day :-) i still do think it's pretty good as a backup or for hillwalking.

<comment><USER19> Back in the day I ran a few WAP[1] sites for 'feature phones' \- I wonder if these nokias can still connect to the internet (over the cell network) and access WAP sites? I've got the archive of my stuff somewhere....

\---

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

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think I have seen any WAP things for the 3310 but it does have a Opera Mini browser, so regular old (no-js) web surfing is still possible. The rendering engine is even somewhat competent, but since the screen is something like 10x10 pixels you have too zoom into the pages and move around your little zoom-box to read anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not to deride the post, but if you're willing to carry your smartphone _and_ a feature-phone, wouldn't it be about the same to carry your smartphone _and_ a power-bank / battery-case of equivalent weight to said feature-phone?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, that would stretch the battery time to maybe 2 days. But I still would have to have both of those in my pocket. Now I get 4-5 days on my smaller pocket phone and the Android stays in the backpack.

<comment><USER20> > But I would still have to have both of those in my pocket.

At the height of the Pokemon Go craze, people were carrying large batteries around _in_ their backpacks, with a long wire snaked out of the backpack between the zippers to the phone in their pocket. Not the _most_ practical thing, but it worked.

It's kind of funny; the next season after that, many backpack manufacturers re-introduced the flapped-seal cable pass-through port that had previously gone out of fashion (it used to be a thing for people who were feeding their headphones into their bag to listen to music from their _walkman or discman_ — not pocketable devices, for most definitions of "pocket.") But by the time the backpack makers did this, the craze was already over.

While we're talking alternatives, another alternative is to activate your smartphone's "Battery Saver mode" permanently, and then disable things like Wi-fi (so it isn't searching for a signal when you're out and about); Bluetooth (I assume, if you're okay with the Nokia, you aren't a Bluetooth headphone enthusiast); and — if you really want to go all-out, and "people phoning you" isn't generally a thing — find an app that will automatically disable the cellular radio whenever the phone's locked/asleep. (Which would wreak havoc on battery life if you woke your phone up all the time, but is great if you only wake it up a few times per hour at most.)

I've been able to pull a good few days of battery life from some rather old phones this way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very cool. If this had a way to count steps, it would have been an ideal podcast companion for me given I really don't enjoy notifications when I walk

</comment><comment><USER22> > I'm not sure why podcasts in particular are so hard on the battery, it > seemed that about equal time on Spotify would not drain it nearly as much. I > suspect that the fact that the podcast files are stored on a external SD > card has something to do with it.

So why not just get rid of that SD card and try another app for podcasts, maybe even Spotify since you already use it with better results?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in a fairly rural place and I'm often in places without 3G coverage, so streaming anything is right out. I doubt that another podcast app would handle the storage any better, but it's true, I don't _know_ that. I was using Antennapod.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yeah, if it wasn't for the hardware having failed on me, even some old Symbian Belle phone would be more than enough.

</comment><comment><USER23> Not sure what the 3310 3G runs, but if it's series 40 it has a lot of annoying bugs. One of them being that removing the headphone jack doesn't pause the music but actually continues playing the music on the stereo. I tried using an earlier Nokia feature phone but that drove me nuts, together with some odd quirks.

<comment><AUTHOR> The info from the phone says OS version MOCOR_W19.6.3. Supposedly this is something diffrent from the Series 30+ that the 2G version of the phone runs. Anyway, it seems rock solid, haven't really had any bugs at all. The resume works, unplugging the headphones stops the playback.

Also the sales material harps on and on about how the phone has the snake game. Witch it has. But it also has a real licensed Tetris game

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Best player I had is Sansa Clip+ with Rockbox FW and 64 GB MicroSD</comment>


Google sued by employee for running an internal "spying program" - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidauthority.com/google-employee-sues-violating-labor-laws-737347/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13226525](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13226525).</comment>


Forth, meet Unix - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/andreas-gone-wild/blog/blob/master/forth_meet_unix.md <comment><USER2> Typed Forth is a new idea, isn't it? Seems novel.</comment>


New Particle Collision Math May Offer Quantum Clues - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-particle-collision-math-may-offer-quantum-clues-20200820/ <comment><USER2> Ok, this is cool.

This touches on a cool problem I saw a talk about a few years ago.

The problem is this: Feynman diagrams are a fantastic notational tool for particle physics models. But the induced equation solving for the associated model is pretty monstrous if done naively. With some care, you can simplify having 100 integrals to calculate down to 10 or so. Roughly speaking.

It sounds like this series of works is about better algorithms for systematically and performantly doing these calculations/ solving the types of math problems that arise out of Feynman diagrams ?

<comment> T-A Yes. "We discuss a recursive algorithm for the computation of multivariate intersection numbers and provide three different approaches for a direct decomposition of Feynman integrals" [1] pretty much says it all.

I'm surprised to see such a technical subject being covered in a popsci article. It's pretty much as far as you can get from the usual fare of big- picture speculation about the interpretation of QM etc. The very last sentence ("it may even foreshadow a new perspective on reality") almost seems like an afterthought, added at the last moment to appease the audience.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.04823](https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.04823)

<comment><USER3> Quotes to show the basic problem and what's been discovered:

"Physicists have algorithms to compute the probabilities of no-loop and one- loop scenarios, but many two-loop collisions bring computers to their knees....

"Researchers use computers to essentially guess at millions of relationships and laboriously extract the combinations of integrals that matter....

"[With new cohomology methods] When researchers compute the weights, they see that scenarios with the longest-lasting virtual particles — that is, cases in which the particles become essentially real — shape the outcome the most. ...

"Last week Mizera, Mastrolia and colleagues published another preprint showing that the technique has matured enough to handle real-world two-loop diagrams."

I've been hoping for a long time that math'ers would make more sense of QM. Fingers crossed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything"

For me the whole branch of physics that deals with particle colliders is a big hoax. Quarks and other particles are simply too small, compared to the size of the sensors that we use to "detect" them. The output those sensors is basically just a static electricity noise, which physicists try to make sense of.

<comment><USER5> We can't detect black holes. All of our signals would be absorbed. Black holes are just big hoax.

Highs boson was predicted and found at LHC, it conforms with standard model. Care to explain the hoax of it?

Whats next disease are caused by foul air, miasma?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone else misread that as new Patrick Collison math?

<comment><USER7> I came here to say this.</comment></comment>