In Defense of Recruiters - <AUTHOR> http://blog.42floors.com/in-defense-of-recruiters/

<comment><USER3> The main difference we've seen is between retained vs. contingency recruiters. Contingency recruiters don't get paid unless they find you a hire, which sounds great in theory but turns it into a lottery for them: spam as many developers and companies as you can, hoping for a big jackpot. It also leads to some of the scummier practices of hiding names and contact information (wouldn't want to lose that commission!), and paying for referrals (after all, if I'm getting $20k for a hire, I can afford to pay out $2k to the person who did the work). They don't really care if you fire the person after 6 months because they'll be on to the next thing (or, even better, they can make another commission off of you!).

Retained recruiters, whether they're contract or full-time, are ones you pay to represent your company. They work off a salary or an hourly rate, like normal employees. They expect to be there in a year or two, so if the hire doesn't work out they'll hear about it. They represent you as a company and don't have any incentive to hide who they're working for or who they're talking to. You can still get clueless recruiters here, but at least the relationship is much better.

<comment><USER4> The problem in most recruiting, as I've said here before, is that the big fees in contingency recruiting models give recruiters incentives to cheat/lie/etc. Fees of 30 - 50K might get people to do things they wouldn't do for 10 - 20K.

You also need to look at risk. In contingency recruiting, 100% of the risk is on the recruiter. Company pays nothing until a hire is made, so companies can engage all the contingency firms they want and most will be doing free labor - spreading the word about the company, drumming up interest - it's free PR for the company. I could find 10 perfect candidates and spend many hours, but not make a dime if none get hired or if the company changes direction.

In fully retained recruiting, all the risk is on the company. The company will pay money out and may get mixed results. My model tries to split the risk a bit, with small upfront fees and small back-end fees (all flat fee and unrelated to salary).

Negotiating with a couple recruiters to pay them some money up front with additional back-end payout for performance may yield better results for companies that complain about contingency firms. Recruiters will appreciate you reducing their risk, and by removing the risk a company should be able to negotiate a lower fee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have almost no problem with internal recruiters, it's the external/contingency recruiters that I hate with a fiery passion. They call during work hours, email constantly, and provide VERY little value in my experience.

As others have mentioned, due to the high payouts to these recruiters they are willing to lie their pants off to get you to accept the job. The last recruiter I worked with tried to hide the name of the company which really irked me. I am not some piece of cattle to be herded between companies and I am perfectly capable of looking up information on a company to determine if I want to work there or not.

I don't need a recruiter throwing buzzwords at me that he/she thinks will convince me to take the job. Every call with the recruiter was more painful than the last and then at one point the recruiters supervisor contacted me and used even more BS/flowery language to try and convince me to apply for the job.

A few months after I got a new job (without a recruiter) I was contacted by another recruiter but noticed before I trashed the email that this wasn't from a company of recruiters. Instead it was a recruiter hired by the company looking for programmers. We talked back and forth on email a little and she was very nice and I felt like there was much less over-hyping (still a little but that's to be expected in that position). Within a few days and about 2-3 emails I had a phone call with the co-founder. I ended up not taking the job due to lack of experience in what they were really looking for but it was a very pleasant experience. Contrast that with 5+ calls (3 during work before I told him not to call 9-5) with the external recruiter, a meeting in person, him harassing my reference, and never once being able to talk to anyone at the company they were trying to hire me for.

<comment><USER6> > They call during work hours

Honest question: Should recruiters call during non-work hours when -- presumably -- no one would answer?

Side note: I prefer email, and it is mysterious to me why a significant portion of recruiters simply must insist on a telephone conversation when an email would suffice.

<comment><USER5> I also would prefer an email as long as it's is not some form letter (which is all I get from external recruiters and is nothing like what I received from the internal recruiter). I'd also like them to take a look at my github, google me, know more about me than "joshstrange.isProgrammer == true".

The internal recruiter talked only over email with me and setup a call with the cofounder in her second email to me. (Note: we traded a few more emails to figure out a time that worked for both of us). I just looked at the first email she sent and it isn't very personalized but it is informal and not a wall of text filled with BS buzzwords.

\</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-- Hi Josh,

I work for [removed]. We're kind of like a [removed] for [removed]. We're [removed], whether they work in factories, wait tables, or drive firetrucks, with each other and the companies they work for. We recently raised our Series B round and we're looking for great engineers to help us reach an even bigger audience.

We are passionate about including all employees at the workplace in the conversation. Potentially you could be a great fit for our engineering team here at [removed]. Would you be open to chat either today or tomorrow?

Look forward to connecting with you.

Best, [removed] \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

As you can see they didn't mention anything specific to me but I am much more open to responding to than what I get from most recruiters.

I may be an edge case in the phone call department but I always answer my phone if I am awake and not in the middle of something with friends. If I am at home at 8pm messing around online or watching TV I will answer. I find it extremely uncomfortable to talk with a recruiter while at work. It was even worse at my last job where I sat within 5 feet from my boss with no divider between us at all. I feel like I have to speak in code and watch out from saying certain words that might tip off my current employer that I am talking to a recruiter. Now a days if I hear the words "Hi I'm XXX XXX with YYYYY" I hangup if "YYYYY" is a recruiting firm. If you google my name you can find my email address in seconds so there is no reason anyone should have to call me and I refuse to deal with external recruiting companies after multiple bad experiences and overall dislike of their business model.

</comment><comment><USER7> You know, I was just called by a recruiter from a great company about a great job. I talked to him for a bit, the job sounded great, the commute sounded great, etc. I asked him if I needed to do anything and he said "no, I'll put you against the job req internally, you don't even have to go on-line".

"When should I hear anything?"

"I have a meeting with the hiring manager in 2 days, I'll call you back right after."

A week passes. I call him back, it's 2pm on Tuesday.

<clearly waking up> "oh yes. Well this job is about..." <repeats the original pitch>

"okay, so I know this, and last time we talked you said you had a meeting with the hiring manager and would get back to me, a week ago."

"so...I'm not at my computer, but I have some feedback on my computer, I'll call you back this afternoon?"

"Well was it good or bad feedback?"

"I...I...have it on my computer. Can I call you back this afternoon?"

"Sure"

No call, nothing. It's 3 days later now. At this point I've hit so many red flags I'm not even interested in checking them out anymore. But it _is_ a great company. One of those Top-20 best places to work kind of places. I called a friend of mine who works there and they checked with the hiring manager, but got a non-reply. I'm apparently being put against the position, so that much _is_ true.

It's not the first time I've dealt with this kind of shenanigans. My favorite is the "why do you want to work here?" question which pops up somewhere in the process. And I respond with "I don't you asked _me_ to come, why do you want _me_ to work here?"

Recruiters really are a waste of time and if I had spent more than 20 minutes on the phone with this guy I would feel kind of burned right now. But instead I've just added it to the pile of bizarre recruiter interactions I've had over the years.

On the flip-side, a company my wife used to work for had great success with a professional retained recruiting agency. It took a few months to finally nail down what they were looking for in a candidate, but before long they had a steady stream of qualified resumes coming in. So there's that.

</comment><comment><USER8> A lot of the comments here are from the employee "I hate being bothered by recruiters" side, which I totally get. But as a (newly promoted) Director of Engineering in SF I'm struggling to make any headway building my team without using contingency recruiters. I'm new to being on the hiring side and my manager is frustrated that my only resource for candidates is to use recruiters (primarily because of the cost). What other things can / should I be doing?

Here are some things I've considered:

\- Meetups: Hosting usually gives you a quick pitch to the audience, but there is a real time investment to make a successful meetup that leaves a good impression. I could attend other meetups and try to recruit but I don't want to be "that guy" when everyone else is there to learn

\- Craigslist, StackOverflow, LinkedIn, etc... These are all things our recruiters should be covering, but I thought I might get some traction as an engineer trying to hire people. Not much luck so far

\- Hiring remotely. This is a little scary but I think that there's a big talent pool outside of the Bay Area that we're not seeing because they don't want to live here. I've read a lot about how to create successful remote teams but I'm wary of building a team that's 95% in-office with one guy in Alabama who's out of the loop.

I'd really love your thoughts or advice on this.

EDIT: Formatting

<comment><USER9> The number one source of candidates should be your own social network, and the number two source is the social network of other engineers at your company. Having an employee referral program is nice, but nothing beats just asking your best engineers directly who they've worked with that you should be working together on recruiting.

<comment><USER8> One of my problems there is that we have a large number of foreign people (myself included) who've only been in the city for a few years. For a number of them this is their first job. Accordingly, the social networks are small. I'll try to work on that, though.

Thanks for your feedback

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you care about maximizing your take home pay, you will not use a recruiter.

Regardless of what they tell you, their fee will factor into your salary negotiations and give you less leverage to the upside.

While the potential employer won't tell you the recruiters fee, behind closed doors the conversation goes "Well, he wants 125K and the recruiter has a 10% fee on top of that, so..."

You're automatically a more expensive employee if you go through a recruiter and that's a bad thing. If you're half-way good at what you do, reach out to the company you like directly.

<comment><USER11> On the flip side, what if you're terrible at negotiating? For those people, even s theoretically reduced salary may be higher than what they'd get for themselves.

<comment><USER12> Most recruiters don't care about the number; they only care that you signed the dotted line. Their downside is much, much bigger than their downside.

<comment><USER4> This is partially true, although you have to keep in mind that agency recruiters never have the incentive to minimize your compensation. They do have an incentive to get you more money, and their biggest incentive is for any offer (high or low) to be accepted - but their incentive is never to get you a lower salary.

<comment><USER13> It isn't that simple. Like real estate agents, they only get paid for a placement. Numbers wise, they are motivated to place you any way they can. They don't have much more to gain from getting you another $10K. They risk not placing you if you are too expensive.

I don't have anything against recruiters but one should be realistic as to how things actually work.

<comment><USER4> They do get paid for a placement - this is true - but there is certainly motivation in getting someone another 10K. For someone like me that owns their own small company, an extra 10K for my candidate could mean $2,500 in my pocket.

I'll always advise candidates on the risk of asking too much or the potential for an offer to be retracted if we don't negotiate in good faith and reasonability, but it isn't accurate to think that the incentive to raise a candidate's salary isn't there for many recruiters. For your example of 10K that may result in $2,500 to the recruiter, that isn't an insignificant amount. That's a mortgage payment for some.

I do agree that the risk of someone being too expensive is real, but the recruiter doesn't decide on what is too expensive - that is a decision made by the market and participants in the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nothing wrong with recruiters, but never make the mistake of thinking they are your friend no matter how 'nice' they appear. They follow the money. It's their job to do that.

I can remember being on contract and wrangling a bottle of Whiskey out of the agent. I had to go into the car park and collect it quietly there as he didn't want the other people he was managing on site to get wind he'd given me it. Funny in an odd way.

Remember that an agent is just following the money. A lot are on basic + bonuses. One reason I used to keep the company and address of my current role off my CV is that their focus is so much on locating new roles.

Of note if you hate an ex-boss, just casually mention that you worked for X :D

<comment><USER15> Usually the 20K payout is staged and contingent on the employee working through a target date, say 1 year.

This has made me want to call them up at 50 weeks and ask for that bottle of whiskey or brown paper bag of cash, otherwise I walk. Oddly enough, I've had plenty of recruiters that placed me call me up on that 53rd week and try to place me somewhere else.

Too bad the employees are not getting in on this racket?

<comment><USER4> In the US the guarantee period is usually much less, and fees are paid relatively quickly. 90 day guarantee (sometimes prorated) and 90 day net is pretty normal, and you might even see 30 day net.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't get all the recruiter hate. You're the pretty girl/handsome guy at the dance, for now. The unsolicited attention will fade with age. Enjoy it while it lasts.

<comment><USER17> I'm sure this isn't universal (though I don't think I'm the only one), but my experience with recruiters has been a series of cold emails for jobs that aren't even close to my areas of expertise in areas nowhere near where I'm located. They usually incorporate some form of "if this isn't a good opportunity for you, can you please forward it to someone else" with no attempt to actually get to know me or what I'm looking for. That type of stuff is borderline spam, regardless of market demand.

<comment><USER4> The forward it to someone else is probably what comes off as most offensive if you haven't developed any rapport with the recruiter. I get tons of referrals now from past candidates, but I almost never ask for referrals. I'd rather be the one not asking for them, which differentiates me from most other firms out there.

If they didn't ask you to forward, would you freely respond with what you in fact are looking for, or would the recruiter specifically have to ask that? I usually phrase my intros by saying if the opportunity I presented isn't something you are interested in, I'd like to learn about what types of things would interest you so I can let you know about only those opportunities if they happen to come across my desk. Response varies, even with that added line.

<comment><USER17> When I get a cold email, especially if the email doesn't show any particular knowledge about who I am or what I do, I almost always want to know how the person emailing me came across my email and decided to email me. It's fine if I get an email about an opportunity isn't a fit for me, but I would like to know who or what gave the impression that it was so I can correct it.

The forward request is a little grating, but I used to reply to recruiters asking how they came across me, regardless of whether they included that line. Virtually none of them replied back. Lately, I've just been junking any recruiter email without replying back if it's clear they don't know anything, or they know the bare minimum, about me.

If a recruiter emailed me, opened the email up with an explanation of how they came across me and why they thought I'd be interested, I'd be much more inclined to respond with more information about what I'm looking for even if the offer in their initial email is not even close or if they asked me to forward the email to someone else.

<comment><USER4> This is good to hear. I usually provide some context, like if you have experience with a certain framework or in a specific niche perhaps - <USER2> caught my eye. Sounds like that info is useful in cases where it was a false positive. Thanks for the insight, and glad it validates my thought process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Recruiters who suck mostly suck because that's what their customers want.

When you get a call from some shady recruiter asking you about a 6 month contract in Omaha, you're getting that call because a company or government agency decided to start doing strategic sourcing and procure people the same way they buy any other commodity.

So two things explain the poor quality -- they are literally squeezing every penny out of the process and are hiring idiots

The other thing is that they don't want to find candidates. They want to have low rates of success -- they're just engaging in a recruitment process to justify hiring workers on guest visas who can be more effectively exploited. If you look in an industry "trade rag", you'll usually find a page with some hard to read, small print job postings -- those are "compliance" advertisements purchased for the same purpose.

<comment><USER19> I was recently talking to two startups through their internal recruiters. The two companies had similar positions available and were of a similar size, but their recruiters were night and day. One of them frequently forgot to get back to me, was unresponsive, gave unclear instructions, and generally slowed down the process. The other was extremely attentive, always moving the process as quickly as possible and accommodating my requests. It was dramatic enough that, even though the company with the slow recruiter had a ~3 week head start, I had to stall with the better recruiter to get an interview with both companies.

Even in situations where the employee profile is similar, recruiter quality can vary widely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The reason full-time internal recruiters tend to operate very differently to external recruiters is primarily because the incentive is entirely different.

Full-time internal recruiters are rarely financially incentivised per hire or to hit targets. If they are, I'd strongly argue that the company employing them is utilising the recruiter incorrectly.

External recruiters live and die by their targets and their commission. Money is a terrible incentive (possibly the worst) for encouraging recruiters to actually help their candidates or clients.

Just like the best engineers/designers/etc, the best recruiters are those that go above and beyond simply to help their company succeed. When you use an external recruiter, that company is an agency.

</comment><comment><USER21> A recruiter setup an interview for me about an hour or so south of where I live. He talked up how great of a person the C __is. I show up early and wait for the recruiter. He showed 10 minutes AFTER the interview was suppose to start and only then actually met the C __person.

I started talking to the interviewer and found out that one of the main things on his list for a candidate was to be local. Within 5 minutes we both knew this wasn't going anywhere and wrapped it up.

<comment><USER22> A long time ago, I showed up in a company for interview after the recruiter told me so. The contact person didn't even know I suppose to be there.

After that, I refuse to go to any on site interview unless I talked to the hiring manager on phone for 10-20 minutes.

If the "lead" is from recruiter to my email inbox, I ask for job descriptions, salary range via email. 98% of "jobs" are rejected base on those info. Good for salary range - No need to "chat" with any headhunter, period!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> If you haven't read Elaine Wherry's post "The Recruiter Honeypot," you haven't read the best one about recruiters. Check it out here: [http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter- honeypot/](http://www.ewherry.com/2012/06/the-recruiter-honeypot/)

A lot has been written about recruiter incentives in these comments, but the market is still clearing even with extremely high fees. The reason bad recruiters can still get paid really well is because there's zero transparency and therefore almost no accountability. I think most of the problems with recruiters could be solved just by addressing this issue.

When you're looking for a good restaurant you can go on Yelp to find one, and you can tell from the reviews what to expect. The same goes if you have a bad restaurant experience -- you can write a review on Yelp and warn others about the crappy food / service / etc. Nothing really exists like this in the recruiting space, despite people really loving to write about how much recruiters suck. And a lot of them do, but what real accountability is there? If a recruiter gets in touch about a job, how do I know he's not super shady? If I'm an employer and need to hire rapidly, how can I find good recruiters other than word of mouth? There should be a Yelp for recruiters. If you're slimy, the world should know about it, and you should have a hard time finding new business and new candidates. If you're a great recruiter who's adding real value, that should be obvious, too, so that others will want to work with you.

Some friends and I have been working on making this a reality. Check it out. Leave a review of your worst recruiting experience (worst one we'll feature on the main page). Or your best one. Or both. And if you're interested in helping us with this project, get in touch. www.hiredex.com

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it not possible to do some sort of "phased" payment to recruiters? So instead of giving 10% of the employees salary if actually employed (or employed for at least 3 months or other variations), how about giving increased percentages depending on actual time employed. So maybe 1% of salary if employed, then 5% is the employee stays for more than 3 months, then 1% every 3 months thereafter until it reaches 10-15% or some other amount.

I would imagine that this would encourage recruiters to not do a shotgun approach (i.e. do any employee you can) as only the actually good employees will be profitable, and the others will probably end up costing the recruiter more than the first 5% he could get.

Of course I have no experience doing this and all figures are made up, but are there any obvious reasons of why this would not work? Maybe in the end the final percentage is higher than the typical market rate for recruiters (i.e. >10% maybe) but extended over a longer period so the recruiter would have to actually cherry-pick the candidates.

<comment><USER4> This sounds a bit like contract to hire, but it's an interesting idea. It's the counterpoint to how recruiters debate the issue of guarantees.

Companies want long guarantee periods, meaning if they use a recruiter and pay 25% of salary, they want a refund if the candidate leaves quickly. Most guarantees I see are 90 days.

When a company wants asks for a six month or one year guarantee, recruiters may use the rebuttal "Well if my candidate stays for 20 years, are you going to pay me a 50% fee instead of 25%?"

It's an interesting concept to reward recruiters who provide candidates that stay for a long time. I've never seen any data to suggest that new hires that come from agencies have any longer or shorter tenures than those found through other means, so I'm not sure how a phased payment system would really help change much (other than recruiters having a vested interest in their hires staying at a job for as long as possible, which is the object of contract recruiting).

<comment><USER24> _having a vested interest in their hires staying at a job for as long as possible_

Exactly what I was thinking, but of course as I'm not experienced with this I thought there could be some glaring issues with it.

I would love to see some data (even if anecdotal) from someone that tried something similar. Imagine that you can even treat some of your older, most successful employees as "passive income"; as a recruiter you made a really really good effort locating, training and making the best fit for someone, and then that someone is netting you, say, 1% of their salary every 6 months or something, for the next 5 years (haven't worked through the numbers so that might not even make sense), but replace 1% and 5 years with X and Y.

In general terms, I would like to have a recruiter in more "closer" terms. So maybe this recruiter got me a job at company A, then 3 or 4 years from now, since they really did their job and know me well, they can put me in a much better job, for say the next 3 or 4 years again, and so forth. That would mean both he and I could have continued income due to the effort we _both_ made. He made his effort picking a really good candidate and so did I, doing my job.

Kind of like an investor. Successful traders are usually the ones that make their due diligence and thus are rewarded with the most handsome payouts. Isn't that what a recruiter should do? invest in a particular candidate and find the best place where his "investment" can payback handsomely?

<comment><USER4> You're looking for an agent essentially who will be getting a portion of your earnings, though you won't be truly paying for the service the agent provided (the company will). I've written about this twice (1,2), inspired by a piece here on HN, as a potential solution for the problems in contingency recruiting, but with fees being paid by candidates. That is the key differentiator to that agent model - the job seeker, not the company, foots the bill.

Would you pay say 2-5% of your annual salary to a recruiter/agent every year? Even in years that you aren't actively looking for a job?

These are interesting questions if you think the recruiter can find you good jobs that you might not find on your own, can provide solid career advice, and negotiate salaries that are higher than what you might receive otherwise. If I can negotiate a 5% higher salary than you every time, paying me 2% every year is a pretty easy decision. Most technologists probably trust that they are as good at (or even better) negotiators than most recruiters, and in many cases they may be correct.

(1) [http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/17/disrupt/](http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/17/disrupt/) (2) [http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/26/disruptii/](http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/26/disruptii/)

<comment><USER24> Awesome! thanks for sharing. I'll be sure to read those articles.

Great to see I'm not alone with this crazy idea. When writing the previous comment I actually started thinking if I would pay someone to actively look for the best job I can get at any given moment, and that I would probably pay for that happily. Of course, you make a serious point about considering that same payment after X years in a stable job (e.g. I've been with Google for the past 3 years... I'm not planning on changing jobs.. why should I pay this guy every year?) very interesting things to ponder over.

Again, thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Hired is basically a team of recruiters (well, at least there are a good 10 of us coming from various flavors of recruiting) and even we have a need for external recruiters and internal interview coordinator.

The external recruiters we use are in markets we don't know a lot about (like Marketing - which we are hiring for big time right now). The internal coordinator helps keep onsites organized and managing the huge amount of interview flow through the organization so that key stakeholders still have some time to do their jobs.

The low-end contingency recruiting agencies have given the whole profession in San Francisco a bad name, when in reality there are great people (like Oliver, from the post) who do great work and are incredibly valuable to a fast growing organization.

</comment><comment><USER26> So how does someone who is a recruitee get connected with a DECENT recruiter?

All I seem to get are the body shop type places contacting me (aka Robert Half, TEKSystems). I've told them that I would be interested if and only if it would mean a step up, go on to explain my current levels of pay,vacation, sick, bonus, etc, and say if the opportunity isn't better than that, then we have nothing to talk about.

Of course they start trying to hard sell me, and it turns out these places have zero benefits.

I'd entertain discussion with someone looking for my skills that would be willing to pay for them.

<comment><USER4> I wrote an article a while back on how to find a decent recruiter ([http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2013/08/09/pretty/](http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2013/08/09/pretty/)). You really can't control who contacts you, so to find a good one you'll likely have to do some outreach.

In my eyes the main thing is experience. Young recruiters who haven't made any money yet get tied up in trying to recruit everyone and they don't discriminate. They waste everybody's time - the candidate, the client, and their own. Wave 5K or 10K in front of someone a year out of school and they go bonkers - wave that same amount in front of someone who has been in business for a while, and they know how valuable their time really is.

The recruiters that are trying to squeeze round pegs into square holes haven't figured out the time management side of things yet. If they figure it out at some point, they could have a long career. If they don't figure it out in a couple years, they have to leave the industry (or bounce around between companies until they are unemployable).

Career longevity could mean that the recruiter is the best at sales and skilled at convincing candidates to take any job. But doing that isn't sustainable over years and years - your reputation will eventually catch up to you.

Find someone who has been in the business for a while with a steady work history and experience in your industry. They will be thrilled to hear from you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> My experience of recruiters is mostly good. I spend almost no time saying no to offers that I don't like. For offers that might be good, I have a better negotiating position than if I applied for the job - I still have my current job, so they have to make a really good offer, otherwise I won't switch.

I am mostly contacted on LinkedIn, and I think, on balance, that it works well there. I've written about it here: [http://henrikwarne.com/2013/08/21/linkedin-good-or- bad/](http://henrikwarne.com/2013/08/21/linkedin-good-or-bad/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I hate the ones that require you to give an in person interview with them before they'll suggest you for an in person interview with a company. Can someone explain the reason they do this?

<comment><USER4> I've never done that, but one reason is for them to be able to coach you. If you show up to meet them dressed poorly or making a bad overall impression, they will either coach you or simply cut you loose and say they couldn't get you in for the interview.

It also helps build a relationship. At some point that recruiter might 'ask' you to take a job with his/her client. Saying no to someone you haven't met is easier than saying no to someone you have spent time with.

Recruiters are constantly doing little sales 'closes' during the process, building towards that big close of you accepting a job offer. It's all part of a sales process, no different than any other sales position.

Edit: changed "the reason" to "one reason"

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> My big problem with IT recruiters at the moments is the constant calls. Come on guys, send me a damn email. I am at a work, not I don't have time to talk to you now. Put your stupid questions, which are the same questions every time, in an email, and I will copy and paste from the last time someone did it.

</comment><comment><USER30> What would be great is finding out how much exactly recruiters and referral services charge. For instance, how much can Hired.com charge per referral to afford to give several thousand back to the employee.

<comment><USER20> Hired charge pretty much the same percentage rate that most agencies charge.

>What would be great is finding out how much exactly recruiters and referral services charge.

The answer is anywhere between 12% and 35% of the candidates annual salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Like the talent you're trying to hire, recruiters span the spectrum from horrible to not-so-horrible... with the occasional gem. Now if only there were recruiters to help find good recruiters.

</comment><comment><USER32> No</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way to handle latency in a simple multiplayer game? - <AUTHOR> I'm making a multiplayer game. I'm just about done. I've got the mechanics worked out, I just need to handle latency in some way.
The game: tron lightcycles, but to turn, the user must solve a math problem.
What I've tried:

   1. Update game state for every player every time either player changes direction. Why didn't it work? Not the best way to handle it (also got that math wrong somewhere, and the undraw function would leave gaps in player trails)
   2. Update game state for every player every 100ms. Why didn't it work? Player 1 and player 2 are running different instances of the class that is supposed to update game state, and I can't share the instance between the two
 Stack: Python/Django, PostgreSQL, javscript/jquery
I need help. Can anyone help? <comment><USER2> Here [1], Ricky "Infil" Pusch explains the two more used methods to workaround lag in fighting games. I'm not sure if this will be useful in your case, but it's a great read anyway. I'm not a gamer but really enjoyed reading it.

[1]: [http://ki.infil.net/w02-netcode.html](http://ki.infil.net/w02-netcode.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would first find out source of your latency problem. Unless you can diagnose the problem first, you can't fix it.</comment>


Ask HN: Is social media useful to your career as a developer? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious to know how people make use of social media in their careers.<p>For me, Twitter is where I cement connections with people, HN is often where I feel I can check the pulse on a topic, but LinkedIn, Facebook, and others have no bearing on my professional life. <comment><USER2> If you asked me in 2009, a GitHub would be enough for a developer's portfolio in the context of an open-source developer. Given the mainstream status of Twitter in referencing tweets as "evidence" in online articles or participation in conferences/meetups, it may be wiser to be on Twitter to market yourself as a dev, rather than the rest of the alternatives.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Snapchat serve no utility for a single developer but instead benefits better for an organisation.

</comment><comment><USER3> You don't ~need~ social media, per se. I've made a decent living not relying on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. I hear about good jobs the old fashion way: Through in-person connections.

If anything, email is my social media.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm trying Social Detox, only trying to keep on track with HN and some Reddities.

Abandoned Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc, too much noise.

Trying to keep Twitter, but, Twitter keep you on a social bubble, so, HN is best to capture trends.

</comment><comment><USER5> LinkedIn is a big source of career opportunities for me, many recruiters send me messages and some had very interesting offers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I abandoned facebook and twitter year ago. I use hn instead to kill time and watch tv series (the killing, mr robot, sillicon valley, etc)</comment>


Ask HN: Would you buy a prototype(docker,angular,flutter,ci)in 7 days for $4000? - <AUTHOR> https://www.notion.so/gug/I-will-build-a-prototype-using-docker-deployed-on-AWS-DO-Google-Cloud-with-angular-flutter-and--2e18af3baa8642c79e3d238ab12dc72c <comment><AUTHOR> I'd like some feedback on pricing, offering and presentation.

</comment><comment><USER2> any results?

<comment><USER3> Replying to 1 email now. Looks promising</comment></comment>


Switching to Disqus has been a "life-transforming experience" - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationarbitrage.com/2008/11/why-i-left-seeking-alpha.html

<comment><USER2> The thing about Disqus that bugs me is its branding. It puts its name on every page thrice and its url twice. Because registration is so front-and-center on its comment form, I feel disinclined to use it to post. Furthermore, despite claims that it can be really well integrated, every time I see it it stands out - not really terribly, but I hate being able to instantly differentiate it from other comment systems.

Also, something about the up-and-down buttons piss me off. They look too grubby. And since they look the same on every blog, that quickly gets annoying.

<comment><USER3> You can remove the branding with CSS rather easily. I've looked for any guidelines on that in their TOS, but I don't see any. I removed the big Disqus logo on from my comments page, but people can still see that it's Disqus.

Their guidelines for use don't seem to mention whether they're OK with people removing their logo; they just say that you can customize it with CSS. Whether that's ethical I guess could be an entirely different debate... that being said, if they explicitly mentioned that you cannot remove branding, I'd put it back.

<comment><USER2> Can you change the buttons and the layout?

<comment><USER3> As far as I can recall, you can change just about anything. If CSS can't do it, you can always fallback to a little javascript, but it's pretty simple to customize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now that's a user testimonial!

What's been every else's experiences? We're contemplating doing the same...

<comment><USER5> I think it's fantastic, and I've definitely seen a dramatic pick-up in commenting activity on my blogs (business & personal).

That said, I've also seen a number of comments get through recently that are essentially spam, which has been a bit of a pain.

<comment><USER2> Does Disqus attempt any spam-blocking methods?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Threaded commenting is coming to Wordpress 2.7:

<http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/7635>

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there a general consensus on disqus vs. intensedebate??

<comment><USER8> Well, seing how disqus is YC-funded and intensedebate is techstars-funded (a competing seed fund), you'll probably find HN's sentiment toward the former.

<comment><USER9> While we may be biased, I've never noticed any sites I visit using IntenseDebate. Perhaps it's less branded than Disqus and I just don't recognize it? Or maybe the circles I run in just tend to favor Disqus?

<comment><USER5> Brad Feld and the Boulder-based VC's seem to use IntenseDebate. Again, biased for the home team. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Note to myself and guide for SXSW 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://startingup.me/post/19267931899/sxsw-2012

<comment><USER2> Well crap. Now I wish I had gone... next year. maybe.</comment>


Ask HN: is there a market for pay per Data Viz?  - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN , I'd like your help: I'm trying to get my feet wet in data visualizations so I have launched a site called "Data Visualizations for 15 Bucks:"
www.datavizit.com
Here's how it works: for $15 I make you a data viz for you to use however you want. It could be for your blog to drive traffic and clicks. Maybe it's for your homepage of your site, or maybe you want it for your email newsletters. Power point presentations. The list goes on.
When you visit the site you'll learn that my name isn't really Taylor Genre. I hide my identity because my day job wouldn't be too happy that I am doing this.
I'm considering this a one-month pilot project because:  1. It takes hours to do these data viz projects and $15 isn't a sustainable price. 2. I want to test the market and see what types of people are interested in data viz for their blog, website, presentation, etc. 3. I'm interested in receiving feedback from those interested in data viz about how they want to integrate it into their business.
Thanks for your help in spreading the word! <comment><USER2> This sounds interesting to me. There was a period of time I wanted to visualise the networks of relationships on my social network just to see if there was any thing interesting. I tried to do it myself but couldnt get anything meaningful or substantiate out of the dataset due to my lack of knowledge and time. I also couldnt tie that time spent messing around with the data sets to the company KPI.

So some suggestions that will aid a startup entrepreneur archetype:

1) How can visualising data help increase my KPI at various stages. I suspect not so much for a pre product market fit company but thats something for you to think about.

2) Instead of hiding the samples behind your main column, bring them to the front.

I remember watching video on TED about this journalist turned data visualisation evangelist a while ago. You won't happen to be him would you? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! I wish I was David McCandless! Although I would like to be the 'next' him. I'm hoping if I can get some good work I might be able to get his attention to start a conversation about making data viz more mainstream.

Explaining the effect on KPIs would be an important part of explaining the value and use on the website - good call. And then targeting KPI when data viz-ing of course.

Good call on bringing the samples to the front. I'll update the site today and give a better way to see the full data vizs I have up there.

Appreciate it!

<comment><USER2> Glad that helped :). But again this is from my point of view which I really want to hammer home -- the 'startup entreprenuer' archetype.

At one point he was saying that a particular data viz too him a better part of 1 month and it only occupied 2 pages in his book. Oh man, thats determination!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey all, I'd love some feedback if anyone's got it! Thanks!</comment>


Twinkle, Twinkle, Vogel Staar: On Mozart's Feathered Collaborator - <AUTHOR> http://www.vqronline.org/essays-articles/2016/07/twinkle-twinkle-vogel-staar <comment><USER2> This piece is exceptionally good.</comment>


Driverless cars could let you choose who survives in a crash - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2150330-driverless-cars-could-let-you-choose-who-survives-in-a-crash/ <comment><USER2> This becomes more fun if autonomous vehicles broadcast their ethical setting. Then you could overcome the prisoner's dilemma with something like tit-for- tat.

"Prioritize anybody else over myself only if they would prioritize me over themselves, given I prioritize them."

</comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't define that well what the options do in relation to their moral setting. Say two cars are driving straight at each other on a 1 way road where one side is a cliff drop off and the other side is lush grass: Does the self sacrifice mode mean that car would pilot itself off the cliff, and the self protection mode would swerve into the grass?</comment>


Try Beta Version Demo of Free Web Reporting Tool - <AUTHOR> https://www.webdatarocks.com/demos/javascript-pivot-table-demo/ <comment><USER2> Cool thing! I hope it's gonna be out soon</comment>


Show HN: Zesture – Control Mac/Windows Apps Using Hand Gestures - <AUTHOR> https://zesture.app/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey!

Touch-less technology is the future (especially after the Covid-19 pandemic).

So, I made Zesture, a Mac/Windows app that uses your laptop's camera to give you touch-free control over your media, entertainment and presentation applications (without any extra hardware).

You can watch a demo video here - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_swm09Xmtg&feature=emb_titl...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_swm09Xmtg&feature=emb_title)

Supported Apps and Websites:

\- Music: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Spotify (Web Player), YouTube Music, Amazon Music (Web Player) and Deezer.

\- Video: VLC Media Player, YouTube and Netflix.

\- Presentation: Microsoft PowerPoint and Keynote.

Supported Actions: Play/Pause, Next/Previous Track, Enter/Exit Full-screen, Forward/Rewind, Mute/Unmute, Volume Up/Down.

Privacy: Using your webcam is totally secure. Gesture recognition is done locally on your computer and hence we don't record, save or send any images or videos at all. Your camera is turned off automatically after a certain period of inactivity (configurable via the app).

We'd love to get your feedback and look forward to answering any questions!

<comment><USER2> > Touch-less technology is the future

What makes you think that's the case? What's the reasoning to start to use touch-less technologies, and why would they be the future? IMHO the lack of physical feedback makes it a non-starter though that's just my personal preference.

Edit: I forgot to add that it looks like a great product, and the landing page is quite good! I just don't see what are the arguments in favor of touch-less techs.

<comment><USER3> Some use cases I have personally worked on:

To allow surgeons to interact with my software within an operating room without the need for an assistant (to remain sterile).

Interactive retail displays outside the store. Users can interact with augmented reality displays and visualize themselves wearing the store products and/or to play a game to win prizes, etc.

Problems encountered:

Hardware adequate for long experiences e.g. Microsoft Life camera freezes after a few hours. Finding a device which can run 24/7 is a problem. Then once you found a good device you need to understand the risk of it being pulled from the market e.g. Primesense, Kinect, Intel RealSense (pulled and replaced by a new product and SDK, etc).

If a depth camera is used the type of bulbs to sunlight can interfere with tracking accuracy. If RGB is solely used then I am curious to see how well it works with various skin-tone in different lighting conditions and complicated backgrounds.

The "heavy arm/hand" problem. Try lifting your hand for 5 minutes and not putting it down. Users can be fatigued very quickly with a gesture based UX. Most products are not designed for this interaction.

In terms of Zesture:

The website is clean, to the point, great starting point. However I would like to:

\- See an Enterprise license for long term support \- Know how well it benchmarks against other SDKs/hardware solutions which achieve the same effect \- Patents, does this infringe on other proprietary innovations? (do you have patent troll insurance?) \- Guidelines for the best experience, e.g. distance from the camera if you were to use gestures to control a presentation \- Roadmap, where are you going next?(FYI I am looking for a new way of hand based gestures which can be deployed via WebRTC and WebAssembly for interactive web based experiences :) )

Keep up the good work, looks promising!

<comment><USER2> Thanks, that's a really good comment, I appreciate the details :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is very neat looking and at some point I may give this a go to control Spotify.

One concern I have though is with this running the LED light on camera is always going to be active (which is fine) but I then won't know if some other (malicious) app is accessing my camera.

Another thing to keep in mind is I am sure some form of this eventually makes it into MacOS. No way Apple acquired all those gesture patents without having some kind of plan for them.

</comment><comment><USER5> I had once a summer intern work on this. I wanted to use it in our chemical and biological labs because scientists had to constantly take off their gloves to use the computers next to e.g. HPLC's.

Funny that people can create a company around such ideas.

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks pretty neat! I'm definitely going to give it a try!

Also, I really appreciate the price, with the $9,99 one time purchase it seems like it's afforable to a lot of people, especially if they'd use it professionally.

</comment><comment><USER7> I bought the old Magic Leap motion control sensor device a couple of years ago and this is an all software replacement.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some college kid could get this done in a day with TF.js/BlazePalm. It's like the Flutter app which google bought for the domain & instead of releasing it or doing anything with it they decided to just use the name for their attempt at another mobile app development framework...

<comment><USER9> Mate, this is a Show HN post. This comment is pretty mean..

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hi there -

Looks very neat, would give it a try.</comment>


Steve Jobs: We Still Haven't Figured Out The Living Room - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/steve-jobs-we-still-haven-t-figured-out-the-living-room-aapl-

<comment><USER2> It's clear what people want: Any movie or TV show ever made, at the press of a button, in high quality.

Now realistically forget the 'ever made' part, and focus on classics + all recent content, there's no reason why cable companies shouldn't be able to deliver this soon. Merge the on demand libraries with streaming video sites like Hulu, and we're almost there already.

<comment><USER3> Ah yes, but you see the telcos don't own the content, and content owners don't own the pipes.

And yet both hate to share profits, additionally the content owner are still trying to find out what price the markets will bare.

To do that they start high and slowly work their way down. And that slows down adoption.

<comment><USER4> And both are big asset oligopoly industries. Content owners specifically don't have any reason to believe that better distribution channels will improve their bottom line.

Actually I think with record producers, video content owners & to an extent, publishing giants are all in a similar (leaky) boat. They are in a situation where life has been good, they are on top of the world. Only way to go is down.

Any move in the directions that technology is pushing towards like better, wider distribution, reduced production costs & power to the consumer is troubling. For one thing, they have a better hold on the here & now then the long tail. Sure they own most of it, but better distribution opens the doors to a groundswell of small producers. Expensive special effects, 1000 actor scenes, are no longer as big a differentiator. Now you want to give these $100k budget jokers access to living rooms?

Will better distribution make people watch more TV? probably not. Why take a chance?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only way I can imagine getting an Apple TV (or similar device) is if it replaces my current cable subscription. I can't justify canceling cable until they offer live-tv for things like the news, and sports.

I'm ok with paying for TV shows ala-cart with no monthly subscription. With how little I watch it would probably be cheaper anyway. The only reason we have cable is for football and a handful tv series.

</comment><comment><USER6> microsoft and sony are the closest with their game consoles, though they have stuff holding them back:

Microsoft is unwilling to give the 360 killer features (such as internet browsing, being a media center without Media Center) at the risk of canibalizing Windows Media Center and Windows sales

Sony just doesn't have the software development expertise that Microsoft has. This is compounded by the dificulty in programming for their Cell architecture which has resulted in delays in many products.

<comment><USER7> Do you really know that many people who hook a Windows Media Center to their main TV? I can count the number I know of on one hand.

The Xbox is already pretty good for watching paid movies/TV shows, and will be pretty cool for watching Netflix stuff in a month or so. I'm guessing it's more that no one wants to surf the web on their TV.

<comment><USER6> I'm not defending MS's decision. In fact I think it's stupid and short sighted (I did say it was holding them back). All I'm doing is stating what I'm seeing in the market.

For me 360 is still too expensive to watch TV shows and movies; and I'm not really excited about the Netflix deal considering you still need to be some premium Netflix subscriber for it to work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think Steve Jobs is right in saying that it will likely remain a hobby for this upcoming year, but in the same sense I believe thats because nobody is really taking a truly proactive, innovative, or scalable approach to it, Apple (and Boxee) included.

The industry has before been isolated because of the lack of content. However, more recently there has been an explosion of content availability. But further adding to the problem has been the usability of that content.

I, personally, own a Media Center PC which I built myself for the purpose of exploring the idea of accessing my TV over the internet. I must say that I've gone away from that route because everything was bulky and much more complicated than using my Satellite receiver that I already had. This is a problem that could be overcome if the effort was put forth to actually overcome it.

What needs to be done is someone needs to create a single simple box that includes the DVD player, USB ports, infarred, Ethernet port, various A/V input, and S-Video, Composite, and HDMI outputs. On this device load a very simplistic, efficient software base which can do the following... Load DVD, Load External Signal, Load "Full Internet", Watch "NET TV"... I quoted NET TV because it is something that would need to be treated different than the Internet. NET TV we could think of it as going to certain content website (like Hulu, YouTube, or even iTune's music store, NetFlix, etc.) and browing them through a simplified interface (rather than their traditional interface) and navigating through them to find the shows you want. This would be done, in a way, like tailoring sites to mobile phone users, only this would be to TV users. Included could be a new service which is truly "Live Stream" from the various news sources.

Just a concept btw...

</comment><comment><USER9> I have a Roku Netflix Player, which is a $100 device with no moving parts; plug in power, HDMI, and put it on your wifi network, and away you go. The netflix selection is rapidly growing (they just got the Starz network, which really helped their selection), and the device will hopefully support hulu.com in the next few months. Between Netflix instant play, hulu, and a great little device like that, I'm not sure what else is needed for TV over the internet.

<comment><USER10> Netflix is moving strongly in this segment. This November their player for the Xbox 360 is coming out, which I'm greatly looking forward to.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I was considering holding out for that, but my 360 is just loud; I don't mind it for video games, but I don't need that thing humming along while I'm watching movies. The Roku's really nice that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a MacMini which I use EyeTV on and FrontRow. Its not perfect but its still impressive and beats an Apple TV in terms of functionality. If the Apple TV was a bit more powerful and allowed for watching/recording of TV then it would be a winner. I use mine with a projector and love it. It is a shame but Apple have a tendancy (such as with the ipod/iphone) to try to lock people into their way of doing things

</comment><comment><USER12> Give me an AppleTV that will output 1080p HDMI, do high quality upscaling, and will play not only my iTMS content, but also stream a wide range of other codecs and containers (divx, mkv, etc..) from any source on my LAN, and has a DVD drive built in, and I'll put one in every room! Double points if it hooks into the NetFlix streaming option and/or Amazon Unbox.

I generally love Apple stuff, however I'm already using my Xbox 360 to stream DLed video content from my desktop, so it's hard to justify getting another device that just does that. If I could replace my DVD player or another device, that'd be something to consider.

<comment><USER13> You're asking for an AppleTV with everything that was intentionally omitted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> the title sounded more fun than the article was.

While the page was loading I imagined a discussion on the current paradigm of entertainment focused on individualism (think mp3-players and computer games where you basically lock yourself out of the world). Traditionally, the living room has been about socialising, spending time with the family etc. Here is where a lot of improvement is just waiting to be done. I was hoping he wasn't going to talk about TVs and movies though. The real question is: What will kill the TV in the living room?</comment>


Chrome DevTools in 2016 and Beyond - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/06/devtools-digest <comment><USER2> Very happy about debugging Node.js in DevTools. Hard to imagine any third- party debugging applications having that amount of features and polish...

<comment><USER3> I usually try to pop into the debugger from within unit or integration tests, but have found this to be very slow and unreliable when doing it over a port. Have you found your experience to be different?What is your setup to debug mocha.js (or another framework) tests in chrome?

<comment><USER4> You should give VSCode a try. I was pleasently surprised about the quality of the debugger. A part from the UI I didn't have any other complaints.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there a way of doing a long running log of all network, page load speeds, etc. in Chrome and store it in a reasonably efficient format? Like a perfmon/tracer for the browser.

I ask this because I've been trying to track down an issue - probably caused by an ad on a news website - where Chrone pretty much freezes up on all processes. Whilst I can (and have) worked around it by installing uBlock Origin in browsers I'd really like to know what is causing the problem. I can't produce it locally so I'd like to get a log of all things that occur on Chrome over the course of a day.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure if this would be of any help, but maybe - so check it out:

[https://github.com/kdzwinel/betwixt](https://github.com/kdzwinel/betwixt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool to see node-inspector go full circle, from cleverly re-purposed debugger UI to officially supported product.

</comment><comment><USER8> They mention "Progressive web apps" and link to some info, but I can't figure out what the difference is from a normal webpage. Do they mean "web apps that use some stuff that was recently added to most modern web browsers"?

<comment><USER9> Generally, a "progressive web app" is something that behaves a bit like a regular native app, when the browser supports it and user allows it. This includes using serviceworkers to cache data for offline (and low bandwidth) use, making a home-screen icon that launches a standalone (from the task switcher perspective) window with no browser frame, and so on.

<comment><USER8> Pretty much what I thought, thanks!

I'm a fan of the concept, hating apps that could easily have been webpages (public transport apps are often a good example), so it sounds like a good idea to give this a name and promote it. It's too bad that this name sounds like Microsoft came up with it in the early 2000s, but oh well.

<comment><USER10> It's an awesome idea and one that is actually not too hard to implement, at least partially. Problem is browser support of the APIs, with Safari lagging behind.

<comment><USER9> Yah, the tricky bit is safari access. I'd love to put a bunch of time into using service workers, push notifications, and so on to make an app-like experience for my users (it's a forum / social network thingy for teachers), but mobile safari really puts a crimp in those plans. Instead I have my own homegrown cache and other hairy tricks that are nonstandard, but work on safari.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> After 5+ years of developing in Chrome Dev tools, I switched to Safari 2 weeks ago (Mac) and couldn't be happier. Chrome has become bloated. Ever notice CPU fans ramping up? Only while Dev Tools is open. Memory hog is an understatement. Furthermore, while Chrome's light, prebundled Flash was an asset 3 years ago it's now a liability: most websites now gracefully fallback to HTML5 video. Safari's upcoming leading edge standard support announcement makes it a candidate for best dev browser. (Hint: try Safari's Responsive Mode)

<comment><USER12> Many news sites insist on Flash still. The shitty thing is that if you use the Developer menu in Safari and change user agent to iPad Safari they often play the video using html5.

<comment><USER13> That's by design. Please read the "Are you planning to add support for Safari on Mac OS X?" bit on [http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/8be5501d-43e7-4b...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/8be5501d-43e7-4bf6-8f1e-e7037980a0f0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's ironic that scrolling stutters so much on a Google Developers page when using Chrome on Android (51.0.2704.81). Inertial scrolling is broken too.

I rarely have this problem on other sites. It usually only occurs on Javascript heavy sites (disproportionately frequently on Google sites using that Material UI toolkit).

I'm using a Samsung S7, but had this same issue on my Nexus 6.

</comment><comment><USER15> the last part of that where paul irish live edits sass looks pretty awesome! good job chrome team!

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm glad to see Css source diffs in there. My workflow consists of tweaking Css in dev tools and then updating source. I've found that if I map directly so Devtools updates the source file I get lost very quickly. Incidentally I'd be interested in knowing of better ways of writing / debugging css.

<comment><USER17> [http://livereload.com/](http://livereload.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> slowly the browser is becoming an JS IDE, and that's nice. Ctrl-Shift-I can become the "READY" prompt of the C64. The "next thing" is CDT auto-saving your changes to css and js for a website, and optionally re-applying them on future browsing.

</comment><comment><USER19> Excited to see better support for App Cache and Service Workers. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from trying to integrate them into one of my applications.

<comment><USER20> AppCache is no more, deprecated, dead. Luckily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Scrolling is broken in Safari on this page. Maybe the page authors should spend less time in the Chrome dev tools and more in the dev tools of other browsers.

<comment><USER22> I'm glad these folks spend their time on Chrome dev tools rather than catering to the users of inferior browsers who expect people to invest extra energy catering to their preferences.

Edit: This may help: [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/new/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/)

<comment><USER5> Whilst the issue may not be the fault of the web designers, there's not really any need to call Safari inferior. It's probably a bug, all browsers have them.

My main issue, FWIW, is not that Apple don't fix bugs - it's the long timeframes they take between releases!

<comment><USER22> Rarely is any description 'needed', but in this case it is 'helpful'. The parent seems to be unaware that Safari has, over time, become inferior (relative to the other popular browsers) increasing the likelihood that the problem is with safari rather than with the site. Being unaware of the inferiority of safari, he didn't even try another browser. Simply knowing that its a safari bug may not be sufficient to maximize the efficiency of his problem solving strategy in the future, as he may brush this off as anomalous. Knowledge that others have found safari increasingly buggy and inferior makes it more likely the parent may adopt a better strategy, such as 'test with another browser first'

<comment><USER21> You certainly have made a lot of assumptions about me. I did test in other browsers - Chrome, obviously, and Firefox. But the fact that it works in Chrome and Firefox doesn't excuse the fact that it doesn't work in Safari. I'm a web developer, so it's my job to make things work correctly in all the browsers, Safari included, so from my perspective the creator of the page did a bad job.

Worse, it wasn't something fancy that it's understandable isn't supported in older browsers - it was _scrolling_ , something that literally every web browser ever has been able to do.

Finally, as a web developer and as someone that has used Safari as his primary browser for many years, I rarely have an issue with Safari being "buggy and inferior". You may not get cool new APIs first, but Safari is usually pretty solid and bug-free with the ones it does support.

<comment><USER23> We will be fixing it. It was a bug in Material Design Lite and we need to upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> NodeJS and Chromium have complete different debugging API's. It would be cool if they where the same, so you could reuse the debugging tools on both platforms.

<comment><USER25> > Thanks to the V8, DevTools, and Google Cloud Platform for Node.js teams, you > can now use all of DevTools' powerful debugging features to introspect a > Node.js app.

See also:

[https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/6792](https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/6792)

<comment><USER24> Will probably have to wait a while until it lands in LTS, but this is awesome!</comment></comment></comment>


100 Twitter followers in 24 hours, just by following people - <AUTHOR>

I created a Twitter account, followed 400 people, and got 100 followers in return.  That's a 25% conversion rate-- maybe this is normal, but it seemed really high to me. <comment><USER2> Seeing evidence of this trick is one criteria I use to block people and (possibly) report them for spam.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well the question you should be asking is why you want all of those followers. If you are trying to get followers in order to promote content then just randomly following people is going to produce very low click through rates as the people are likely not interested in what you have to say.

However if you are trying to get a lot of followers to get paid to promote services, then that is the way to go.

</comment><comment><USER4> I haven't had the patience to go that high (or bothered to script it), but I've gotten about halfway there before. Depending on what kind of profile it is, though, and what areas you're following people in, many of the follow- backs can be pretty low-quality. If you're in any neighborhood with lots of _other_ people trying to optimize their twitter followers, you can get a bunch of auto-followbacks from people who don't ever read their twitter stream. Produces an interesting situation where there might be dozens of accounts all following each other but not reading each other, a fake attention economy with nobody paying attention. :) Perhaps as if magazines upped circulation by agreeing to buy copies of each others' magazines and then throw them away.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's high. I've done it with results typically from 3 to 25%, depending on the demographics. Problem is that it doesn't really scale. Great to get a few hundred or thousand followers, but you aren't going to get to a million that way.

</comment><comment><USER6> It doesn't seem particularly high, but generally people fall off over time. However, I wouldn't actually recommend this tactic as a way of gaining followers.

1) Following too many people erodes the value of your Twitter stream, its better to be invested in the people you follow. You'll get a lot more out of the experience. 2) Your followers won't actually be as engaged as they would have been if they had found you though more organic growth. 3) I think people tend to judge accounts that are following way more people than follow them...but maybe that's just my own bias.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's pointless. We have more than a thousand Twitter followers, but they rarely ever click through on any of our content. The same content posted on Facebook yields very different results.

</comment><comment><USER8> This tactic to gain twitter followers does work and there is even tools for making it easier. Just google twitter follower exchange or something and you will find them.

Though if you do use those tools, your twitter stream will be full of stuff you really might not want to read.

</comment><comment><USER9> There are many programs around there that can do this automatically for you. But imo it is not a good idea, real people are much more interesting. I don't think you will achieve that much with a bunch of people that are not really interested in you & just follow you back.

</comment><comment><USER10> I used this exact tactic with <http://twitter.com/u24_dailyquotes> and now twitter won't allow me to follow anyone else, even if I unfollow some accounts. Be careful!

<comment><USER8> You can not have more than 10% more follows than followers after two thousand follows. This is so that this tactic wont be used too fast and the twitter bandwith wont be used so much for following.

<comment><USER10> I've got around 50% followers to follow ratio...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> GIGO</comment>


Brain Reorganizes to Make Room for Math - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/38793/title/Brain_reorganizes_to_make_room_for_math

<comment><USER2> Already submitted by pg:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=409696></comment>


Ask HN: Have you not been laid off? - <AUTHOR> This is the counterpart of the original thread "Ask HN: Have you been laid off?" . So that we have a balanced view, since if your question is biased, you will only get biased answers, which will lead to panic unnecessarily. <comment><USER2> I run a remote-first consulting company. So far everything is good. My clients are all pushing me to work for them. I even signed and started a new contract in the middle of all this. That said, it is unsettling to watch the world crumble around me while my business is growing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I haven't. I'm really enjoying the quarantine, hope it goes on forever. We're working faster now that we have more energy without the long & dangerous commute. Everyone seems more relaxed (except the ones whose tables got taken over by their kids). Weather's been great too.

Though we're selling stuff to the government related to controlling and living with the pandemic, so things have been rosy.

</comment><comment><USER4> I run a small company so I am on the other side BUT I can tell you that there is a lot of concern right now if we will be able to sustain the same levels as normal even though we are SAAS and should not be directly impacted. I am just worried if this situation will unleash more issues in next few weeks and I really cannot/do not want to lay anyone off in our team.

</comment><comment><USER5> My company switched to fully remote, so everything seems to be running smoothly. Most of the team members do not like it though, happiness has been dropped, and generally, we face the challenge on keeping everyone on the same pace and office dynamics we had.

<comment><USER6> I somehow feel the same.. although everything seems to run okay, productivity is reduced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> We've switched to working remotely. So far morale is good.

<comment><USER8> Same. Small company (30-ish) in an industry that runs medium (200) to large (2500). From what I've heard recently the big guys are having a heck of a time and stumbling to get their workforce working remotely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The company I work for has switched to fully remote. Our team has handled it pretty well so far, but I know others within the company (particularly non- development teams) are finding it challenging.

</comment><comment><USER10> Curious to see how things at FAANG are going. Maybe they start seeing some of the benefits and adopt remote work in the future.

</comment><comment><USER11> I haven't and I'm a consultant currently on the bench. We got some emails saying there's nothing to worry about. Still worried though.</comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone interested in a PDF rendering service? - <AUTHOR> We are generating PDF files from data in XML or JSON with a different approach from other available solutions. It is for hight quality output, simpler to use and very flexible. You will be able to use our tools to design your documents with ease and integrate your service with a simple API. It scales quickly from 1 to more than 100 million PDF files per month.<p>I will share more details soon. If you are interested, request access to the private beta at https://goo.gl/forms/FlLUSKuMHfeaDrlr2 <comment><USER2> If you want to sell something like that, I think you have to find a use-case for non-technical users they cannot satisfy for free elsewhere. Or you go after enterprise. "XML or JSON" inside the product description will probably attract only people, who will just pipe some OSS together. HN is probably not your target audience, either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback and I agree with you. I just wanted to know what could happen with the post, and it looks like it's not the right target audience. Anyway, I will post next month a demo on Show HN to see what happens :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We render all our own PDFs. It's no biggie. So how is your service more useful? There needs to be some substantial benefit for our firm before I will approve investing tech resources to check out your beta site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, thank you for asking!

Generating PDF files from XML or JSON is usually a very simple task, however, there are some use cases hard to address.

We recently worked with a team with needs to generate 15 million of PDF files with 10 thousand different designs and the main problem was they were spending one or two weeks with one full resource to develop any new design (with requirements to develop 5 to 10 additional designs per month). We were able to reduce the time to one or two days per design, not weeks, the substantial benefit was reducing time and costs.

If you have a similar or particular escenario contact us it will be nice to know if we can help.</comment></comment>


How Poor People Survive in the USA – DW Documentary - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHDkALRz5Rk <comment><USER2> This week I've made a comment on social media, about exclusive games making the market worse for everyone but console manufacturers. I expected it to become unnoticed, but then an angry rando walks up to me and tells me that 'If I'm poor' (I'm not, he couldn't know, and he made it sound as if I am a bad person if I was) I 'should f*cking work and not play games', and that having multiple consoles is no option only for people with 'low economic standards'.

Even the burned out former bay area software engineer in that documentary seems to have been living with stereotypes about homeless people. Unfortunately this only changed after becoming homeless himself.

This added an observation to a long-term curiosity why many US people seem to forcefully ignore all the homeless people on their streets while claiming to be Christian. Completely brainwashed by unquestioned and unrestricted capitalism.

There was a similar documentary about poverty and US people having 3 jobs a few weeks ago and that comment section was full of non-US people wondering why everybody is just accepting this situation. Why there aren't massive protests. Thought about this when seeing how that single mother was forcefully evicted with 1 day notice out of her house of 7 years, and just accepted the situation.

<comment><USER3> 'Why there aren't massive protests.' \- seriously there should be, in the form of not shopping / spending money / supporting places that are not paying a living wage to employees.

Which varies from local to locale - although in many areas it's very hard not to shop at walmart, since in some places they have put all other similar food / hardware / basic needs places out of business for miles and miles.

Sadly Kroger and even though target is paying more than many places, still only pays about half a living wage in my area.

With this, people are just accepting that there will be people living 10 people to a house, sleeping in basements / couch surfing - not able to afford basic medical and dental care.. and we are supporting it when we shop at places that pay like they do.

Some people have more choice than others, so mass protest is not easy.

I'm sure there are more ways to tackle the issue - doing housing that is cheaper and food too - basic things. I'd like to see more affordable dental options and healthcare as well. There are many forces against these things however, and they have the high ground.

</comment></comment><comment> cia-killer They should interview me</comment>


Bossman: tmux-backed shell for your OS X menu bar - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ianclarksmith/Bossman

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to note: it's my first cocoa/objc project, lacks features, but is simple and convenient enough to be used right away.

<comment><USER2> The readme really doesn't give a good indication of what it is. A screenshot in the markdown might go a long way depending on what it actually does.

I mean it sounds like it overloads every single menu bar command for whatever application you are running, but that doesn't make much sense. Alternatively it could be an app that has a menu bar with say File/Send Command that you click and something pops up, but that seems silly. Why would I launch that app when I could just launch a terminal and connect to tmux.... Or maybe it is one of those non-hardware icons that sit in the hardware section of the menu bar running all of the time?

I guess the real question is why wouldn't I just use the terminal to type?

<comment><AUTHOR> "Alternatively it could be an app that has a menu bar with say File/Send Command that you click and something pops up, but that seems silly."

Bingo! It just sits in the menubar so you can run things, and the hotkey is there for you to do anything you want with. Set it to pop open a window and attach, announce "your task is complete", or whatever. Simple, boring, silly, etc. Just for those times when a terminal window would get in your way because you're working on something else. That being said, there are plenty of interesting features that could be added to make the idea more compelling.

Edit: my noprocrast is about to kick in and I think I'll honor it... so thanks for taking a look, hope I didn't waste anyone's time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Kinda wanna know what this app actually does. A screenshot would be helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah sorry, I'll get to it when I'm back on my laptop. On top of that I made a ridiculously stupid typo before committing so anyone who downloaded it is probably really wondering wtf right now (so _if you want to try it, please redownload the release or rebuild from git_ : [https://github.com/ianclarksmith/Bossman/releases/tag/0.0.1](https://github.com/ianclarksmith/Bossman/releases/tag/0.0.1)).

\- Open the app

\- Alt-click the status icon and peek at the prefs

\- (Optional) If you use Terminal, set Command-Enter to

        osascript /full/path/to/Bossman.app/Contents/Resources/Attach in Terminal.scpt

\- Type a command and press enter. Type another command and press command+enter. You've seen the whole thing.

\- Everything in a tmux-session called (by default) "bossman-app" so you don't lose history, can check up on things, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> would love a better explanation of this, I can't really tell what this is even after reading the read me.

<comment><AUTHOR> All it does is send your command from a text field to a running tmux session. If you want to `brew update` without getting in the way of Netflix on your little laptop screen, it will do that. If you need to check up on it, just connect to the session from another terminal (or use one of the provided scripts so you can attach to it via the hotkey).

For another comment on how to use it, see below in reply to caiob.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What would be an example of what I'd use this for? Also it would be nice if I could send interrupts.</comment>


We Kept Almost Making Money - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-16/we-kept-almost-making-money <comment><USER2> "When people tell you that cryptocurrency will enable smart contracts on the blockchain that supersede traditional court systems and automate trust, allowing frictionless commerce with no need for archaic subjective state justice systems, remember the time people asked the police to dig up a corpse to ask it who stole their Bitcoins!"

<comment><USER3> I'm CTO of a legal tech company, and we've set pretty realistic goals: define a good schema to describe contracts, link them to relevant knowledge, and track how they change over time like git. We use some NLP for figuring out how a contract is structured and identifying clauses.

The number of competitors we saw start up 2+ years ago, promising a fully- automated lawyer, predicting outcomes to cases, building smart-contracts that would somehow be perfect and not ever be contested or need to keep up with case law, getting funded was shocking. Less shocking is how many of them I've seen collapse under their utterly unworkable premise over the past 6 months. Worst part is, this is actually bad for us, because all the baseless hype has eroded trust in the industry.

<comment><USER4> Just curious - what company is that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> WRT Aramco 's IPO:

> By the way, all of this is … sort of an obvious trick? Like, go public with > a limited float, put the stock in friendly hands, give investors incentives > to buy and not sell, get a high price and then hand the stock off to index > funds to consolidate that price and make a profit for the early investors.

But isn't that what short sellers prevent? Every index investor basically bets on there being active long and short investors keeping everything in check.

<comment><USER6> > limited float, put the stock in friendly hands

That part is key. In order to short the stock you need someone to lend you shares first. If there is high demand from short sellers relative to the available float, then the cost to borrow the stock will go up, making the short position more expensive to maintain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The biggest scam WeWork pulled was only lightly touched on: getting investors to compare them to a software company. I'll never understand how a group trying to monopolize office space so they could jack up the price in the future has anything at all to do with tech.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does Levine talk about WeWork in all of his articles?

<comment><USER8> No he also has a running joke about the the SEC's seeming view that "everything is fraud".

He has said that for some topics like WeWork he'd like to stop writing about them yet they continue to have absurdist revelations that can even be enlightening, or at least amusing. Hovinian was like that for a few months.

<comment><USER9> Also, he used to almost always have a section called "people are worried about bond liquidity" although sometimes it was something else, like unicorns.

Some recent column had a bit where he _should_ have mentioned bond liquidity and he didn't, so maybe he's gotten tired of it.</comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk announces another price hike for "full self-driving" package - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/07/elon-musk-announces-another-price-hike-for-full-self-driving-package/ <comment> java-man What I really want is a hardware switch that disables any kind of input from the "self-driving" software. Something that cannot be overridden by an OTA.

<comment><USER2> First, the self-driving features are all opt-in.

Also, a lot of features are passive, like sound alerts.

You have to enable things like Autosteer, Summon or Navigate on Autopilot in settings before you can use them. Then you have to hit a switch while driving to let the car help you drive.

As for emergency features (which all cars get), they also have to be enabled in settings, like Lane Departure Warning, Automatic Emergency Braking and Object Aware Acceleration.

My question to you: what if you turned off Object Aware Acceleration and then ran into something... or someone?

<comment> java-man I am looking at it from a security perspective. Any sufficiently complex software system, especially one that does not have security as prime design goal, exhibits a large attack surface. It is not a matter of if, but a matter of when.

Example scenario: a CEO of a large public corporation (which attracted a lot of short sellers). A journalist who have exposed some far-reaching shenanigans of the rich. A political opponent.

I am sure all the relevant agencies are quite busy analyzing Tesla code right now, for exactly this reason. And I know for sure that security is NOT the design goal at Tesla, at least when I talked to them. I would have designed the hardware differently from the start.

Again, I am not talking about a common use scenario for regular people, or driver turning off some safety feature. I am concerned with security of the system as the design goal.</comment></comment></comment>