Ask HN: Who's Hiring? - <AUTHOR> We're in a recession. Many great, talented people are out of work (including plenty of folks here at HN, I'm guessing). We know, though, that many companies are also still hiring - so let's put these companies and job seekers in touch.<p>Are you hiring? Does your company (or your friend's) have openings? Let HN know!!! Let's get some good people good jobs.<p>(We've got 900+ startup jobs at Startuply right now, and we'd love to get you all involved - it's easy and completely free for everyone. That being said, post any openings you know of here, too, to get some love from the best hacker community evar.) <comment><USER3> Awhile ago I posted my site, <http://www.happyjobsearch.com> here for feedback. I hope no one minds my mentioning it here again, but it seems relevant.

I wrote the site over a weekend after I got laid off for the second time in 3 months. The first time I was laid off, I took a very haphazard approach to looking for jobs and it caused me a lot of stress. I made Happy Job Search to help get organized. It's like a GTD app just for job hunting. It's optimized for quickly adding jobs to your "inbox", then going through and investigating each job, adding notes, and filing the job under a next action (send email, make call, etc). Finally, it's made to be useful for quickly reviewing a job opportunity before you interview.

It takes a little time to actually go through and enter job information, but it really helped me. It's also free. Hopefully others will find it useful as well and won't go through what I did the first time I was laid off :)

(ps, LukeG I'd like to email you but your address isn't listed. Mine is firstname.lastname@example.com. Thanks!)

<comment><USER4> I was doing some work this past summer trying to extract good feature sets from job ads so users could train a neural network to help filter through ads.

I see there are a lot of sites that to do something for employers but its good to see someone else thinking of job seekers. Not much out there for us and I think an opportunity exists for someone that can optimize and organize the process with _us_ in mind.

<comment><USER5> I have(/had) a project in this area as well, and I kept stumbling over the monetization problem-- job seekers are a population that has a strong disincentive to parting with their money.

NotchUp has an interesting play on this problem, though hard to say if they're getting any traction.

Obviously the employers and recruiters are the ones holding the money, so most solutions tend to cater to their dealflow needs.

Any other stakeholders with money that are part of this ecosystem? Or other monetization ideas?

Are there any affliate players in the job space? E.g. capitalizing on bounties/etc for successful hires/interviews?

<comment><AUTHOR> Stay tuned for <http://www.jobsyndicate.com>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a related question: I'll posit that there is a higher density of "very desirable" top-notch hackers being thrown into the job market than at any other time in my 15-year career. You know the people: the ones that rarely hit the normal job market because with one or two emails, they can line up their next gig in an afternoon throught their network or friends-of-friends.

For those of us who are hiring, what strategies can we use to ensure that we in-person interview more of those candidates (with whom we can generally sell them) and spend less time on the "perma job seekers" that seem to form the bulk of the job applicant population. I don't mean to sound overly elitist, but if I've only got 1 spot open, I want to take a shot at selling the very best candidates, and spend as little time interviewing the also-rans as possible. (This is in regards to professional hires; our college-level recruiting program is in good shape, and there's less change from last year there than in the landscape for professional hires)

<comment><USER4> Show some respect during the interview process. Possibly make their point of contact an engineer rather than an HR person. I interviewed with a company that had a technical recruiter who knew technology and I was very impressed by them for that.

Also keep in mind, how you run the interview process says volumes about what its like to work in your company. Taking > 2 weeks between responses shows lack of interest. Making a person have to "ask" for a plane ticket to come to the interview is a big turn off too. The interview process is a great time to show that you take care of your people and make it easy for them to do their jobs. Take care of us as candidates and we'll assume you'll take care of us as employees.

These are pet peeves. One other thing... communicate the type of position you're looking at putting the person in before lining up their in-person interviewers. I've had situations where I interviewed with people who did stuff I found interesting and I felt rapport with them. Likewise I had one company thought about putting me in a position completely wrong for my skills and the people I interviewed with had nothing in common. They later offered a position after the interview that was more in the right direction but this would have been good to figure out in a phone interview.

Thats my $.02.

<comment><USER7> I have to echo your point about the response time. I recently interviewed with a large well-known software company, and I told them about some of my schedule limitations (due date on an existing offer), and the HR person seemed dodgy about it at best. My interviewer loved me, but told me that the company generally was unable to respond in less than 4 weeks.

If you want your potential hires to feel valued, move through the recruitment process at a good pace. There is absolutely no reason there should be a 4-week gap between first and second interviews. I've seen plenty of companies that have gone from first interview to offer in the space of a single week - <USER2> includes flying the candidate in.

The worst part is that I emailed the HR contact reminding them that this deadline existed, and to this date (a week and change now...) I have not yet even received an acknowledgment on their part.

Oh well, I'd been warned against that company to begin with.

<comment><USER7> And speak of the devil - they got back to me and were gracious enough to tell me that they were unable to meet our deadline, despite their interest.

Oh well, I guess I'm going with the other offer :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Justin.tv is hiring the best and the brightest to hack on our awesome live video site. In fact, we have almost as many graduate degrees as we do college drop outs!

If you're a sysadmin, network engineer, or programmer, you can find work here: <http://www.justin.tv/jobs>

<comment><USER9> _"In fact, we have almost as many graduate degrees as we do college drop outs!"_

Hmm... This post is difficult for me. On one hand, I don't want to negatively impact Justin.tv. On the other hand, I feel obligated to let everyone know that if you don't have a college degree or other qualifying credentials, you probably won't get hired there.

I went in for an interview, and as far as I could tell, I passed. But afterwards, Justin took me to a bookstore across the street and told me that their investors felt they needed to hire "more qualified" developers. So I wasn't brought on board.

My credentials: I dropped out of high school when I got hired in the gamedev industry. When I went in for the interview, I had been in the industry for about three years, and had been programming in general for 8. So if you have credentials similar to mine, it would probably be better to not waste the time in the interview. But if you have credentials that would convince an investor that you should be hired (college degree, etc), then go for it.

Sorry, JTV. I wasn't going to say anything until I saw "we have almost as many graduate degrees as we do college drop outs" ... this gives people a false sense of hope, from my point of view.

<comment><USER10> What is your point? That your single case of not getting the job means that it is not true that they hire college drop outs?

I mean there is plenty of other things than just experience related to hiring someone. "More qualified" may well be a nice way to say "you don't seem to fit in" or whatever their reason not to hire you.

<comment><USER9> Would you rather be told:

"Listen bud, you're talented, but not quite right for us due to X, Y, and Z."

... or ...

"Sorry, we want to hire you, but our investors won't let us."

If that was the case (and I don't think it was), then the latter is a cop-out. You don't make up reasons not to hire someone, no matter how much you want to. You'd be doing a disservice both to the candidate and to yourself.

My single case is just that: a data point. Weigh it along with all your other data points before making your interview/no interview decision.

<comment><USER10> Fair enough, I guess you were given a straight answer.

Anyway for some reason you original reply sounded to me pretty much like: "these guys did not give me a job, they suxxors! Don't go near them!"

Often you do not know the reason for not hiring. "Just does not feel right" or "gut feeling" may be the real reason, and then you try to rationalize it somehow. Hiring is not an exact science.

<comment><USER9> _"these guys did not give me a job, they suxxors! Don't go near them!"_

No sir, that wasn't my intention at all. :) JTV's interview was extremely rigorous, and they all seem like great hackers. In that regard, they r0x0rz. Unfortunately, their investors may have the final say as to whether you are hired or not, which is what I wanted to tell everyone.

<comment><USER10> No harm done. :) I guess what made me comment in the first place is that I have found your comments here very thoughtful and good.

I still this this statement is an unfair generalization based on your personal experience:

"...if you don't have a college degree or other qualifying credentials, you probably won't get hired there."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At Disqus, we're looking for a front-end hero* . The candidate should be good at everything from visual and UI design to Javascript optimization. Email email@example.com.

*hero is the new rockstar

<comment><USER12> Just for the record, if I were looking for a job, and you used _hero_ (or ninja, or rockstar) in the title, I wouldn't take you guys seriously. This seems to be a common sentiment.

<comment><USER11> Hence the footnote. It's a little in-joke that it seems you didn't find funny. I encourage anyone who's turned off by that part of the job post to please apply anyways. My above post was made as an individual, not as a representative of the company, and cannot be taken as a representative sample of Disqus's mean level of seriousness.

<comment><USER12> Don't worry, there's no permanent damage, and Disqus does seem like an interesting company. :-)

I think I, and a lot of people, respond to ninja, etc., negatively not because They're Silly Words And This Is Serious Business, but just because they're tired and non-descriptive. I have about the same response to something like, "Senior Solutions Manager". It's not a logical reaction based on evaluating the company, more like just an automatic, "Ugh..."

<comment><USER13> "I think I, and a lot of people, respond to ninja, etc., negatively"

Unfortunately words like that have become a bit "buzzy" with HR and management (non-techie) types: "Oh, so all we have to do is say 'ninja' or 'rockstar' and we're instantly cool and really talented people will want to work here. Can I be a rockstar too, pls?"

<comment><USER12> While that might be true, my reaction comes from seeing it overused by techie folks that can't manage to state what they want, and the closest they've been able to figure out is a euphemism for a workaholic with more enthusiasm than expertise.

<comment><USER13> "a workaholic with more enthusiasm than expertise"

I've spent the last twenty years becoming a slacker with more expertise than enthusiasm, so I'm with you there ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> we're hiring a couple badass engineers at dropbox (python/c++; client/desktop app dev experience preferred).

we're backed by yc and sequoia... shoot me an email at drew AT getdropbox.com

<comment><USER15> "we're backed by yc and sequoia..."

... hmmmm.... I can't say being backed by sequoia is a great thing anymore. Being backed by Sequia means you probably will get fired as soon as the main product is built, to save on "runway" money. Disposable engineer, maybe lucky if you made it through a year and got some of of the stocks vested.

Sequoia backing might be great for founders, but with the recent happenings, definitely not for employee engineers.

<comment><USER16> Agreed, but not for the same reason. A better response would have been "we have great revenue and broke even X months ago" not "we're funded by VC money and consequently could go under at just about anytime".

Also, why are there 170 comments in this thread with many job openings but the 'jobs' section of HN is ... quiet?

<comment><USER12> That depends on what you're looking for. If you're just looking for a stable job, you're right. If you're looking for a position where you'll have a better chance of being in a leadership position, you're better getting in early. If the company's already profitable, your chance of eventually being, say, VP of engineering, isn't great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How timely, we're looking for 3 fulltime quality software developers right now!

Some requirements: 4+ years experience doing fulltime development, proven UI/UX skills, experience with SaaS oriented development, and desire to continuously improve your skills. And at least 10 points of karama at Hacker News :)

You'll be working on projects from conception to launch, contributing to the success of the business in a big way.

Preferred: Experience with Perl and Scrum.

<comment><USER18> 4+ years, wow. Lenny I see you guys have upgraded since last I worked there. ;)

<comment><USER17> finally taking your advice eh :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I work at Rentrak Corporation, and we're rapidly growing. We're a stable, 20+ year-old company, and we're working on sexy, technically challenging problems. In particular, the group I work in is building a database that's expected to grow by more than eight terabytes per year.

More info here: [http://rentrak.com/section/corporate/careers/software_develo...](http://rentrak.com/section/corporate/careers/software_development.html)

<comment><USER20> If I were looking for a job in the enterprise space (I am not), I'd take a serious look at Rentrak. Once of their ARchitects made a presentation at Google titled "Is your rdbms letting you down? Application on TV Viewing Behaviour" (<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4681632964554085715>) which I found very interesting - terabytes of data, their own frontend data extraction language ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> We are hiring PHP developers at Connected Ventures (College Humor and Bustedtees). If you are in the New York area (or willing to relocate), send your resume to techjobs [@] connectedventures.com.

I will post more details at Startuply next week.

<comment><USER22> How's the New York scene for tech jobs? I'm going to try for a job in New York at some point (more in direction C++), but New York is not particularly know for being a tech hub in this sense. What's your personal impression about the availability of non-web related programming jobs?

<comment><USER21> This city does has non web related businesses. New York is known for finance and stocks. I have a friend who writes financial modeling software for a hedge fund. The scene does exist, but you have to go look for it. If you expect to go into a cafe and be surrounded by developers and tech folks, you will be vastly disappointed.

The more events and meetups I attend the more I realize that this city is full of great talent, interesting companies and even some reputable VC's. The biggest "problem" for me personally has been weeding through all the non tech people to find others who are doing things that interest me.

<comment><AUTHOR> tough time to be in finance...it looks like there's a net job outflow from Wall St, including for engineering positions.

<comment><USER21> To be more clear, that is my overall take on New York. I cant really speak for the current NY job market as I haven't been searching. But I do have a few friends who have been laid off (interestingly none of the very qualified folks).

The job market isn't all that wonderful anywhere else either. What I think will happen is some the people laid off from the various wall street positions will go start boutique shops... Long term they will be bought out and merged together to create larger groups...

<comment><AUTHOR> well how else would ibankers make their money?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We are hiring excellent Objective-C / Cocoa devs at Kodu (<http://www.kodu.co.uk>), to work on some upcoming iPhone applications. Don't let the uk domain throw you, it's a per-project position and we are fully open to remote working.

See <http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/4634> for more info.

</comment><comment><USER24> We are (Ning): <http://about.ning.com/jobs.php>

Software developers (front end PHP focused and backend distrubuted Java focused) and QA engineers are especially needed.

<comment><USER25> Probably an offline question, but how is Ning to work for?

<comment><USER24> I can give you the summary online: "pretty darn cool". For the complete dish, feel free to contact me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> My employer (Guidewire Software) is hiring: firstname.lastname@example.com

As an employer, it's a total hidden gem. It's website screams "boring insurance industry vendor", but inside it's got a very very good developer environment, and it may very well reach its goal of dominating its chosen niche: core enterprise systems for insurance companies. The other devs are excellent, management is excellent and very decentralized/hands-off, very little politics and other nonsense, free snacks and drinks, tons of interesting work. We're a java shop, so we'd expect some java experience, but most importantly, we're looking for really good, really smart devs. A CS- related degree (masters preferred) from a top school helps.

<comment><USER20> "My employer (Guidewire Software) is hiring:"

Didn't Guidewire lay off some people a while ago? How is the funding at Guidewire? Did GW break even yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> We're hiring a Rails Dev in Portland, OR.

We do 1000 req/minute. We have tables with 100+mil rows. 30" monitors, MBPs, and the office is on the 5th floor looking out at 7 (of 9) bridges, the river and downtown. There's a bar 1/2 a block away with 14 taps.

Agile, RSpec, Pairing, the works.

Our CEO is Ward Cunningham (the Ward in TDD by Example, inventor of the wiki and terms like "Stories").

It's pretty freaking awesome.

Email github username + resume to jon.farr -at- aboutus (dot) org

<comment><USER28> i can haz yer bebbes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> We're hiring at Ning, more or less all roles: front and back end engineering, operations, product mgmt, UX, QA, various management roles. On the eng side we have java, ruby (not rails (okay, there is one rails app)), c, php, and whatever-or-not, the focus is on getting the job done with the right tool for the job not the language or framework.

<http://about.ning.com/jobs.php>

Email me if I can answer any questions -- my HN username @ning.com

<comment><USER29> Just saw Alan's post -- hi Alan!

<comment><USER24> Hi Brian. We should chat more in this comment section, because going down the hall to converse in meatspace is so time consuming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> <http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/>

</comment><comment><USER31> Related question: I recently left my previous job and am now looking for consulting work. I have never done consulting before. I have RoR / Ruby / machine learning / startup experience. How should I go about finding clients?

<comment><USER3> Tectonic, I was an RoR freelancer for 2 years. Here are sites where I've found jobs:

<http://jobs.rubynow.com> <http://jobs.37signals.com> <http://bostonrb.org/jobs>

If you also just google "rails jobs" you'll find the other useful rails job sites out there.

The best way to find work, however, is to build your network. One of the best clients I had was referred to me by a fellow I happened to have lunch with when I was in NYC for a couple weeks. Another of my best clients was referred to me by a friend. Where are you located, btw?

Another way to find work is to find other web development companies and just email them asking if they need help. I've found work this way as well, and have had more success contacting local companies.

edit: One thing that helped a lot was I developed a rails tool (Palmist, <http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/projects/>) , then I gave a presentation on it at the Boston ruby group. Since then, many interviewers have perked up when I mentioned it because they had either seen it or used it.

Hope this helps!

<comment><USER32> On the rails job front, over at Rails Forum we also run a job board for rails positions @ <http://www.railswork.com/>

I've actually seen a fairly steady number of job postings the past couple of months (it's always been a somewhat low volume jobs board -- 3-5 new posts per week, I'd guess -- but the volume hasn't dropped off).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> We're hiring! Looking for exceptional, detail-oriented engineers and product managers to help us take over the social world. We're profitable, too.

Jobs page here: <http://www.lolapps.com/jobs.html> (sorry for the lame-ish job descriptions). Drop me a line if interested (email in my profile).

<comment><USER34> Profitable in stealth mode? How did you manage that trick?

<comment><USER33> We've been generating revenue since we launched our first product. It's a lot easier to make money when it's been a part of the thought process all along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Also, posting any internship opportunities would be greatly appreciated as well.

<comment><USER36> Sure, who want's an internship (unpaid, see my profile)?

<comment><USER15> don't be cheap. either pay some, or give some equity. I know the job market sucks, but great students have jobs for sure.

<comment><USER36> I've always run my startups very cheaply. Then again, I haven't had many interns either :). So point taken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> My employer isn't a start-up anymore (still privately funded though) and we're hiring in the Pittsburgh area.

[http://www.invivodata.com/aboutus/careers/clinical- systems-s...](http://www.invivodata.com/aboutus/careers/clinical-systems- software-developer/)

We also have a small development center in Scotts Valley, CA that isn't actively hiring, but is often looking for good engineers, especially those with Windows Mobile experience.

bjanaszek AT invivodata.com

</comment><comment><USER38> Facebook is always looking for good engineers: PHP/Frontend stuff; Python/C/C++/Java for backend stuff; data science and machine learning. Start on their jobs page, do a couple of puzzles, demonstrate exceptional ability.

<comment><USER25> It's advised solving a puzzle first isn't it. i'd love to apply otherwise.

<comment><USER38> Solving a puzzle is a good way of getting attention for your resume. It allows engineers to evaluate your coding skills much better than they would in a phone interview, it demonstrates interest and ability and geek cred. You can definitely apply without a puzzle, but there's obviously a large number of applicants that do so (and a corresponding signal-to-noise problem).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> OpenRain out in Mesa, AZ (Phoenix East Valley) is also hiring like crazy too.

Generally speaking, we're always on the look out for software engineers who write solid code with Ruby and JavaScript. If you're looking for a challenging position in software, I'd be happy to hear from you. We also have open PM and sales positions.

<http://openrain.com/about/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER40> We're looking for a Ruby rock star here at Devver.net (<http://devver.net>). We're a small venture-funded startup that focuses on cloud-based developer tools. We're based in Boulder, CO, but we're comfortable working with a distributed team. If you are interested, contact us at email@example.com for more details.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'd love to talk to someone who could do some flash work on a freelance basis in the NYC area. Not for a startup, but fun stuff.. Imagination a big plus!

gavin at gavinbrown.com. Include a link to some work.

</comment><comment><USER42> We aren't a start up but if you'd to do more low level programming work there is a Toshiba run shop in Nashville TN working on HDTV software (firmware up through GUI) and we are hiring. C and C++ - Real time programming experience a plus. Unix development - multi threaded - synchronization - blah blah blah, you get the idea.

<comment><USER43> It just so happens that I live in Nashville, and I've done a lot of multithreaded network programming. You haven't provided any contact info, though, and there's nothing in your profile I can see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> salesforce.com is hiring. let me know if you are interested and i will get your resume in.

while there are some exceptions for some really exceptional candidates, most of the jobs are in downtown San Francisco.

mostly java. looking for enthusiastic, hardworking and talented individuals.

is it soul sucking? honestly? not yet. its in the middle stages. ppl are enthusiastic, high quality and hard working still.

email me here w/ your resume if you're interested! (email expires 11/25/2008 11:10PM PST) email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER45> Fleaflicker. If you're passionate about sports and software development and you have a CS degree, contact me. We operate like a startup but you get all the cushy benefits of working for a large company.

<http://www.fleaflicker.com/jobs.do>

</comment><comment><USER46> We are happy to take some angry laid off rails developers )))

<http://supercoolschool.typepad.com/blog/>

</comment><comment><USER36> Not hiring exactly--looking for co-founders who are in the fortunate situation where they can work for no salary indefinitely (and get equity of course).

<comment><USER47> Same as you, except "a subsistence wage in the Bay Area" instead of "no salary" :) (see my profile)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I am looking for some machine learning guys for quant work. Email me at greggurevich at gmail.com

</comment><comment><USER49> I've been reading this post throughout the day and I must say, what an amazing act by the community here. You guys are awesome, all of you.

</comment><comment><USER50> Me: <http://www.ingamenow.com> developers, designers, business folks and content producers

<http://quantcast.com/ingamenow.com>

</comment><comment><USER51> Us college kids are going to need jobs soon too! Anyone looking to add someone to their team come June?

<comment><USER52> I've found quite a few startups want people with 3, 5, or more years of experience, and not so many that are actively looking for grads. It's somewhat understandable, but those looking for soon-to-be grads (esp. in the NYC area :) should speak up.

<comment><USER53> How active is BR Ventures up in Ithaca for seeding new startups? I know they are connected with Cornell - maybe they could help you.

Anyway, I'm a recent grad and my partner is graduating in spring 09. We are starting something up in NYC. We may be looking to add one more guys on the technical side. Shoot me an email if you want to talk (address in profile). I was personally in a similar boat as yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> As a consulting firm (Viget Labs, <http://www.viget.com/careers>), we have a slightly different relationship with the economy (some companies are more likely to come to us, some are less so). As a result, it hasn't really affected our hiring priorities at all. We're looking most actively for a senior-level Ruby/Rails person, a front-end developer, and some marketing folks...

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm looking for a marketing or business related internship with a tech startup for the summer. Check my profile for my blog and contact info

</comment><comment><USER56> I put up a list of relevant job listing sites on my page a few months ago, mostly to point people to a starting page. They all still seem to be pretty active.

<http://www.moondust.dds.nl/jobs.html>

Disclaimer : I've posted it here before, there are no ads, it's not for- profit, only marginally relevant to this thread, yadayadayada, etc.

</comment><comment><USER57> <http://tipjoy.com/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER58> we're looking for a lead engineer at weardrobe (details at www.weardrobe.com/joinus) drop me a line at email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER59> We are always looking for top-notch developers in Chicago. We build trading systems on a variety of platforms, including C++, C#, Java, Ruby, and RoR on Windows and Linux. Full-time positions and internships doing agile, test- driven development. Send your resume to my HN username at connamara dot com.

</comment><comment><USER60> Hello, HN!

If anyone is looking for programming work near Eugene, Oregon, they should definitely check us out:

<http://eugene.craigslist.org/sof/898533379.html> <http://www.otsys.com>

(I'm a HN lurker and happy On Systems Employee.)

</comment><comment><USER61> Xobni is hiring developers - send resumes to firstname.lastname@example.com!

</comment><comment><USER62> I nominate this for thread of the year.

</comment><comment><USER63> We are looking for RoR hackers and/or software engineering generalists at EMI Music. Read more about our job descriptions here: <http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg3h36zx_23c4ck9bc9>

</comment><comment><USER64> On a similar note, can you folks offer advice on how to "form" a team and apply for the summer round of YC if you are applying from overseas? I am from Sydney and am looking to form/join a team with those in the valley or otherwise (as long as they are willing to move to YC ofcourse).

I know it sounds silly and absurd. I have been desperate to apply to YC for ages. Only thing that has stopped me were my studies (which I am almost done with) and my mortgage (I can still take a few months for something as challenging and important as YC).

In case I wasnt clear, I am keen to jump across the ocean for YC.

Any advice? Any takers? Please contact me for more details if you would like to gauge my experience and skills.

<comment><USER65> have you ever applied for COMET funding from AusIndustry?

<comment><USER64> I have looked into it and found (along with other entrepreneurs here) that it caters for ventures that are in a slightly more developed stage than startups. It is more for companies with slightly more significant size (more than 5 or 10 i think) and patent portfolios (atleast 1). From memory I think revenues are must as well.

2/3 hackers from a garage (ok I am making it sound romantic now, apologies for that) are not catered by the comet grant. And also the environment is just not the same as YC!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Axolotl Corp is hiring two full-time developers in San Jose, CA to work on enterprise clinical data sharing applications for the healthcare industry. This involves both front-end web applications and back end data processing. Current major platforms include: Java/J2EE, IBM Lotus Domino, IBM DB2, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, SOAP, HL7. We care more about intelligence, problem- solving, and understanding of fundamental development concepts rather than skill with any particular programming language. The company is not a start-up any more but still fairly small.

<http://www.axolotl.com/careers/index.htm>

</comment><comment><USER67> Ok, I was thinking whether to post this here or not for a couple of days, we are not a fancy startup (quite the opposite) and our requirements are far from common, but since it seems there are quite some people looking for jobs, there it goes

We are also hiring on Craigslist and actively looking for developers (aka rockstarts, pirates, ninjas, heroes, barbarians, wizards of oz) with knowledge and experience on perl/mysql/sphinx/javascript-jquery/css

we do what we do, our frontend is as unsexy as it looks (and I really hope this will change in a future) but we have _a lot_ of interesting problems related to massive amounts of data and traffic/spam/scaling.

mail at pablo at craigslist.org

</comment><comment><USER68> The 10-person startup I work for, SnapMyLife, is looking for a Rails developer outside of Boston (Needham). Check it out:

<http://www.snapmylife.com/static/jobs#rre>

<comment><USER69> "The ideal candidate is... posses a computer science degree"

That's unfortunate, since computer science has almost zero relevance to what you do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> haven't published this job yet but id like to be as helpful as possible to this community. need a java apps developer (familiarity with a framework like stripes is very helpful) in santa barbara california.

funded and still quite stealthy you could say littleBiggy is mcluhan meets the white pages. our interview process starts with a sample project you do on your own time and get paid for. we learn about each other through working together and take it from there. i can be reached at fredb.

</comment><comment><USER71> Gilt Groupe in NYC is hiring both experienced candidates and recent grads.

<http://www.gilt.com/company/job/1337>

Email me at email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER72> Habit Industries (YC 07) is :)

<http://www.fuzzwich.com>

<http://www.habitindustries.com/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER73> The startup that I work for, Akaza Research, is hiring: <http://akazaresearch.com/about_akaza/careers.html>

Mostly Java/J2EE, based in Cambridge MA. We deliver an open-source product to the life sciences, OpenClinica (<http://openclinica.org/>). Contact me through my profile (Linkedin, blog, etc) if you have questions.

</comment><comment><USER74> Clickable is hiring for Software Engineers in NYC. See the job description at <http://www.clickable.com/corp/jobs/20080723softeng.aspx>.

We're still a very small team, but our customer base has been expanding rapidly since we took our second round of funding this summer (Led by Founders' Fund, with additional investment from FirstMark and Union Square Ventures).

</comment><comment><USER75> Me: <http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/11/i-am-hiring-in-london.html>

</comment><comment><USER76> Atalasoft is hiring:

<http://www.atalasoft.com/company/careers/#aspnetarchitect>

</comment><comment><USER77> We are hiring developers, php, js, ui, etc...: <http://jobs.centraldesktop.com>

<comment><USER78> Your UI opening requires a CS degree? <http://jobs.centraldesktop.com/details?o=ui_designer>

<comment><USER79> I'm not related to the parent poster, but I'm happy to see that. There's some good work done in HCI, and I'm glad to see appreciation for it.

<comment><USER78> I'm offended. Limiting the job to a CS major is the equivalent of limiting it to a design major. UI/UX specialists require skills/knowledge in BOTH design and computer concepts. You aren't going to find someone who is 100% qualified (according to their degree(s) alone) unless they have a BOTH degree in design AND CS, so why discriminate against one or the other?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> We (<http://www.codesynthesis.com>) are looking for great C++ hackers in Cape Town, South Africa. For more information on what we offer and who we are looking for, see

[http://lists.clug.org.za/pipermail/clug- work/2008-July/00062...](http://lists.clug.org.za/pipermail/clug- work/2008-July/000625.html)

</comment><comment> bjelkeman-again Senior Web-developer - San Francisco, Netherlands, Stockholm, Sweden or London, UK.

We are looking for a really experienced HTML / CSS programmer/designer preferably with a background in Python and Django. Some PHP experience is of course useful. Provable work on open source code is a merit.

<http://www.akvo.org/web/jobs>

This is a fulltime position.

</comment><comment><USER81> Playlist.com is hiring developers. If your a talented PHP, Python or ActionScript programmer get in touch with me at gabe {at} playlist.com.

Take a look at our new website here: <http://www.playlist.com/?home=a>

</comment><comment><USER82> Us: <http://www.tableausoftware.com/jobs>

I love the people and the product. Rails, C++, desktop, client/server. Interactive data visualization - analysis that's more fun than should be allowed. :)

</comment><comment><USER83> woti.com Computer Scientist (all levels) - Crystal City, Virginia

Design and develop high-performance, data exploitation and web-database applications following a standard life cycle development model, including unit test development and quality assurance. Experience with Linux, Python, HTML, and SQL is required. Javascript or C++ language experience is a plus. Oracle database programming (and preferably performance tuning) experience is also a big plus. The ideal candidate will have strong written and verbal communications skills; ability to work effectively in a team environment, including a strong ability in troubleshooting production software. woti.com

<comment><USER84> Interesting that you describe the position as a "Computer Scientist". Unfortunately it sounds more like software engineering.

<comment><USER83> I understand what you mean. I don't know if this is the correct forum to convince you otherwise. This is the WOTI mission statement.

White Oak Technologies, Inc. (WOTI) seeks to be the premier organization providing the next generation of advanced algorithms and systems for large- scale data retrieval and exploitation to our commercial and government sector clients. Being the leader in advanced Computer Science demands the very best engineers and analysts, and our stringent recruiting process assures our customers that WOTI staff is truly the "best of the best" in the nation. We are committed to delivering exceptional value to both our clients and employees through innovation, solid business skills, and dedication to excellent service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> We have openings, in particular (as I keep posting!), Trovix is looking for a search hacker. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=355208>

</comment><comment><USER86> Ever thought of moving to India?

Directi ($300MM, Internet Products, DNS + Infrastructure) is looking for Tech Leads and Engineers.

See: <http://careers.directi.com/>

<comment><USER87> gosh, you really do need help! proxy error on click. :-/

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> BumpTop is hiring developers too, all the way up in Toronto, Canada! <http://bumptop.com>

C++, OpenGL or Flex. Email me if interested anand at bumptop.com

</comment><comment><USER89> If you're in Sydney Australia we're looking for PHP developers at various skill levels. Send a mail to shawn at casid dot net if you're currently looking and we can setup a chat.

</comment><comment><USER90> We're always hiring senior php developer talent at myYearbook. If you're up for relocating outside of Philadelphia or are in the area, drop me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER91> I have some clients who are hiring; if you like working on client sites and know event-processing systems, I can definitely help out. byrne@hunter- green.com

</comment><comment><USER78> Is it a bad time to be looking for an internship?

<comment><AUTHOR> I suspect not - interns are usually good for cheap labor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Looking for a contract developer to work on a firefox extension. Interested? Email me at khang.toh _at_ gmail _dot_ com

</comment><comment><USER93> What about if I am from the Philippines? :-/

<comment><USER10> And looking for a job? What's your profile?

I am from Finland originally, but working in Manila right now. We don't exactly have openings right now, but never know what we might need in the near future.

<comment><USER93> I am in Cebu. IT is also good here. I have been doing PHP (LAMP) for almost 3 years now. Right now, I am passively looking for a job since I am currently employed. If I like the job opportunity, then I'll leave the big corporate environment in a blink ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> I'm QA & looking for a job any ideas?

<comment><USER31> <http://casttv.com> was looking for a QA, you might contact them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> I am told by my friend Tristan that Apture.com is looking for top notch javascript hackers.

</comment><comment><USER96> We are hiring! Flex & .NET developers, as well as designers. email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER97> I have been looking for good jobs in the Houston area. I'd appreciate suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER98> Long shot but does anyone have anything around Sacramento?

</comment><comment><USER99> Google is still hiring, got an email from them today.

</comment><comment><USER100> watchdog.net is looking for good people:

<http://transparencyjobs.com/jobs/49/>

</comment><comment><USER65> our Manila, Philippines base is hiring people who know RoR and if you're a Merbist ... better :)

</comment><comment><USER101> I'm an uneducated young adult with a very High IQ. FEED ME MONEY.</comment>


MicroPython 1.5 (small Python implementation for IoT, etc.) - <AUTHOR> https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2015-November/698784.html <comment><AUTHOR> Some highlights:

1\. Advanced REPL support with smart auto-indent and auto-completion for comfortable interactive typing pf Python code, easily switchable to paste mode to copy pre-made code snippets.

2\. Support for client SSL connections.

3\. upip, MicroPython builtin package manager, is now fully standalone thanks to SSL support.

4\. There's new, elaborated API to access hardware features ("machine" module).

5\. There're now 2 well-supported microcontroller boards for MicroPython, and dozen(s) community-supported ones.

6\. MicroPython was selected as one of the languages supported for BBC micro:bit initiative: [http://ntoll.org/article/story-micropython-on- microbit](http://ntoll.org/article/story-micropython-on-microbit)

<comment><USER2> > _1\. Advanced REPL support with smart auto-indent and auto-completion for > comfortable interactive typing pf Python code, easily switchable to paste > mode to copy pre-made code snippets._

That's better than the 2.7 Python REPL right? Is 3.5's REPL like that?

If not is there any effort to get that kind of REPL to regular Python?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's better than 2.7 REPL, definitely. It's a bit different than 3.5 REPL. 3.5 does more for you on auto-completion front, but MicroPython is much better on smart- and auto-indenting. Give it a try - it's easy to build it for any Unix- like system, let us know what you think about its REPL!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've played with micropython on an esp8266 board, this one in specific: [https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-huzzah- esp8266-breakout/...](https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-huzzah- esp8266-breakout/overview) and it is quite nice, although it still lacks much of stdlib as it all has to be written from scratch.

That being said, the project is fantastic and they're on github, so send them pull requests:

[https://github.com/micropython/micropython](https://github.com/micropython/micropython)

<comment><AUTHOR> There's also pretty large subset of stdlib available: [https://github.com/micropython/micropython- lib](https://github.com/micropython/micropython-lib) . But it's targeted primary at Unix port - you can install it even on a low-cost Linux board with 4MB of Flash (~1MB free space after Linux kernel and minimal userspace), and rock away!

<comment><USER3> Any chance that the esp8266 port will be improved to be a bit more stable? I'm happy to send you some huzzah boards (seriously) if you want to work on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I have full drawer of boards ;-). If only I had enough time to work on them. esp8266 port progresses, but quite slowly. We need more people to contribute (spreading a word is helpful). Another option to give it more momentum is some company to sponsor it, or Kickstater organized. Let me know if you have any ideas/interest, otherwise, well, feel free to keep that in mind in case suitable occasion comes out later. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Cheermeup – Make something funny and share it - <AUTHOR> http://cheermeup.io/ <comment><USER2> So, what am i looking at? A gif website? How is this different from 9gag, giphy, imgur etc.?</comment>


Dear HN: I wrote an SVG charting library. What do you think? - <AUTHOR> http://kilianvalkhof.com/2010/design/grafico-javascript-charting-library/ <comment><USER2> I've wondered when an _opinionated_ charting library would appear and gently guide people away from pie charts.

Apple dropped a couple of notches in my estimation when they brought out iWork and 3-D woodgrain pie-charts were proudly displayed.

<comment><USER3> What's wrong with pie charts? For certain datasets and views they are perfect. What's more, people understand them.

<comment><AUTHOR> People think they understand them, but piecharts are hard to understand because you can't differentiate between a 24% and a 25% slice. Read a far better explanation here: [http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intel...](http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intelligence/save_the_pies_for_dessert.pdf)

They are perfect for a very, very limited set of datasets: if you have a very large slice and a number of small slices and want to show the obvious difference.

<comment><USER3> Ummm... I think you can make that argument for ANY chart type. I can't differentiate between 25% and 24% in a bar graph either.

In fact, IMO, bar charts (normally) have the far worse problem of being relative to the largest value. In a percentage situation, you want the size of the bars to be relative to the whole, otherwise its misleading to say the least...

So the take away fact is that all visualisations have weaknesses under certain conditions.

But to offer graphing library that does not offer pie charts is, well, a bit silly in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It looks really nice and I've been looking for a while for something like this. However, until it supports IE properly are things like this useful? IE (combined) is still 62% of browsers. Don't get me wrong - it's a great concept. But it has to work on the most common browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> This works in IE, it uses Raphael ( <http://www.raphaeljs.com> ) so IE gets VML :) IE is noticeably slower though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My main problem with javascript graphing libraries in general is that there's no way to copy & paste the graph into facebook, forums, etc. And if you're a data orientated site then visitors from shared graphs, etc. are going to make up a significant percentage of your traffic. If it's not easy for people to share your graphs then you're just giving away a lot of free traffic.

<comment><USER6> <http://www.jqplot.com/> makes use of canvas and every browser that support canvas has a function to export them to bmp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very nice, but I don't see any way to generate a legend. I'll probably need to cut the graphs from a screenshot for my less technically oriented superiors, so a legend is mandatory. I love the sparkline support, btw.

</comment><comment><USER8> That looks cool. I'd use it more if you could export the SVG file once it's rendered. Oh, and a gantt chart layout would be cool too!

</comment><comment><USER9> Your spark____ examples need retooling. The point of a spark is information density. In the sparkline example(s) you have 7 data points across 75+ horizontal pixels (i.e. very low information density).

<comment><AUTHOR> check the sparkarea example, it has a lot more. You control the datapoints and the width, so it's all up to the person implementing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The 'available graph types' need to be linked to examples.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea, just did so :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hey Killian, that looks nice. How do you get this to work in IE? I tried to look at the examples in IE7, but it just froze.

<comment><AUTHOR> The example page has 25 graphs it tries to generate all onload, IE can't handle that at once. It could be fixed using a queueing function but I haven't written one yet.

IE can handle it fine (slower, but fine) if you use just a couple of graphs.

<comment><USER11> Yes, it did load finally. That's great, so are you generating VML or using excanvas?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's built on Raphael ( <http://www.raphaeljs.com> ) so VML :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> very nice.

</comment><comment><USER13> Great job killian, I was looking for something exactly like this. =)

</comment><comment><USER14> Very nice! This will be perfect to use in my project. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER15> I like it. though wish it was one written for Jquery

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice documentation, and nice looking graphs.</comment>


Starbucks cafe's wi-fi made computers mine crypto-currency - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42338754 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15897811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15897811)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's funny because if your computer is plugged in at a Starbucks, they're mining with their own electricity. Whoever did this wasn't stealing from their customers nearly so much as they were stealing from Starbucks themselves.

</comment><comment><USER4> This wasn't the first, and it won't be the last.

      https://twitter.com/imnoah/status/936948776119537665/photo/1
      https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/16367620/showtime-cpu-cryptocurrency-monero-coinhive
      https://wccftech.com/the-pirate-bay-cryptojacking-mine-monero/
      https://coinhive.com/

From Coinhive:

      *Ad-Free Content
      Run your site without ads

      Coinhive offers a JavaScript miner for the Monero Blockchain
      that you can embed in your website. Your users run the miner
      directly in their Browser and mine XMR for you in turn for
      an ad-free experience, in-game currency or whatever
      incentives you can come up with.*

<comment><USER5> There's a Twitter threading site that does this too: [https://twitter.com/tttthreads/status/922503320765218816](https://twitter.com/tttthreads/status/922503320765218816)

<comment><USER4> I researched a little more from what you pointed out, and here is a list that I found of pages that load the coin-hive miner, dated Sep 28.

[https://gist.github.com/PaulSec/029d198a1e049acead74c31db0de...](https://gist.github.com/PaulSec/029d198a1e049acead74c31db0de1466)

[https://twitter.com/paulwebsec/status/913055079112036352?lan...](https://twitter.com/paulwebsec/status/913055079112036352?lang=en)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use my PC fan as a detector for nefarious scripts. If opening a site causes a fan to run at its peak for more than few seconds, I close it immediately or at least disable JS on it.

<comment><USER7> If you're on a Mac, I'm a huge fan of MenuMeters

[https://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/](https://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/)

<comment><USER8> I like iStat for this purpose [https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/](https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It was the WiFi provider not Starbucks. I'm guessing they were doing this at other cafes and hotels etc.

<comment><USER10> It was Starbucks' wifi provider, selected by Starbucks and operating under Starbucks' supervision. This is 100% on Starbucks, not on anyone else.

<comment><USER11> So you're saying never to trust 3rd party providers? It's one for the legal team I'd say; in this case Starbucks probably didn't provision for abuse or time spent in the wifi portal in the contracts. Might have a case for causing reputation damage.

<comment><USER12> If it were my business I'd absolutely say that. Doesn't mean you shouldn't USE 3rd party providers but you should be very careful. That's obviously not saying anything about legal responsibilities, of which I know nothing about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> meh

I'll take background mining over ads any day.

Users may bitch and moan now, but they'll come groveling back in no time. Their outrage is no match for their lack of attention span and need for free content. Soon enough background mining will be as un-newsworthy as banner ads.

<comment><USER14> Except that majority of PC users are on laptops, and mining in the background WILL make your fan go nuts, which is not what you want as a user. On my desktop - sure, I won't even notice. But on a laptop, where the fan stays off/low rpm when just browsing? Nope.

<comment><USER15> Battery life is an even bigger issue. I don't want to see ads, but I also don't want my phone or laptop's battery being drained so the site owner can get a few fractions of a penny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you don't use VPN, this is one more reason to make sure to exclusively use HTTPS.

<comment><USER17> HTTPS or not, the mining script will work

<comment><USER18> But the Wifi provider can't inject their own mining script on arbitrary sites with https.

<comment><USER19> This wasn't injected though. It's a splash screen that pretends to load for 10 seconds (whilst mining) before forwarding the user on to some starbucks rewards site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Fun to see who else is doing this: [https://nerdydata.com/search?query=coin- hive](https://nerdydata.com/search?query=coin-hive)

</comment><comment><USER21> I can't see how the security researcher's advice helps anyone.

<comment><USER19> It's good advice but completely irrelevant to this incident.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This was isolated to one cafe in Argentina.

<comment><USER19> The OP on twitter states otherwise. It was observed by him in several Starbucks locations in Argentina.

[https://twitter.com/imnoah/status/941050946100097024](https://twitter.com/imnoah/status/941050946100097024)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> How does this work?

<comment><USER24> See [https://coinhive.com](https://coinhive.com)

It mines Monero using JavaScript. Best suited for sites where you sit on one page for a long time, and where there's lots of visitors.

Often, it turns out that it isn't the site owner doing it, but rather, they were hacked, and someone injected the JavaScript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yeah in Buenos Aires</comment>


Quads - <AUTHOR> https://www.quads-puzzle.com/ <comment><USER2> This is basically a clone of Gram Games' 1010! played on a smaller 8x8 grid.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gramgames....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gramgames.tenten)</comment>


Ask HN: Is it ok for Lyft/Uber drivers to solicit unrelated businesses? - <AUTHOR> Yesterday I ordered a Lyft to meet up with a friend, the ride started out normal enough with some small chit chat where the driver told me about a camping trip he went on with his church, and then asked me what I did for a living.
He then launched into what I could tell immediately was a pitch for some kind of pyramid scheme where he testified that his friend (the guy a level above him) had made "hundreds of thousands of dollars per year." I knew he was about to sell me on something I was not interested in. Not wanting to engage, I just sort of listened while he carried on for the duration of our 15 minute ride. I never asked him exactly what the nature of this business was, but from the sounds of it, it seemed like a network of people who click each other's google/amazon ads.
He went on at length talking about how ethical it was before I even asked anything about the nature of the business. After saying nothing for most of the ride, he finally said "This sounds like you might be a perfect candidate for something like this." I politely declined and told him I was satisfied with my current career.
Is this kind of thing considered OK? Normally my Uber and Lyft drivers have been very friendly, but on occasion I have gotten sales pitches from drivers with side businesses.
I gave him 1 star and moved on, but frequently encountering this kind of behavior would make me hesitant to continue using the service. <comment><USER2> I think a better solution would be a user setting for whether or not you're interested in conversation during the ride.

If you are interested in conversation, I don't think solicitation is that inappropriate, as long as it stops at the first moment you say you're not interested. Like you say, it's common for small business owners to be driving to supplement their income, because driving doesn't pay a living wage by itself. I don't think they should have to hide that fact from you.

<comment><USER3> This was an idea from the show "Nathan For You"!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've had an MLM salesperson try and pitch me in an Uber before. He was driving a BMW and claimed that his company gave it to him for being a top salesperson for them. Kept trying to give me his business card. Wasn't a fan of that experience. Also one-starred.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think it's just part of the gig economy. UberX and Lyft drivers are not typically professionals, they are people with jobs looking for part time income. If you want professional service go for Uber Black or your local limousine service. (not necessarily a lemo, they have smaller cars too)

I usually converse in an agreeable manner with my UberX and Lyft drivers to get a feel for different markets in the area and learn about other lifestyles. I think it is quite interesting!

</comment><comment><USER6> If you think conversation is not going to the direction you enjoy - you may leverage something between ignoring silence up to firm "I am not interested in this conversation" to curb someone's unsolicited enthusiasm.

On a side note - last time i took Lyft - I had very pleasant conversation with lady who is also part time art teacher and artist.

It also fun to exchange passions - but of course - as long as it's mutually enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER7> Giving him 1 star is part of the "economy" here, he won't be allowed to drive if people don't like this process.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd much rather get an MLM pitch than a "build my app" idea pitch. Either one is not offensive though. Slow phones with slow gps leading to missed directions, and dumb passengers who don't know how to use pool are much bigger problems.

</comment><comment><USER9> They're not employees; they're independent contractors.

</comment><comment><USER10> No. But one star them and it will stop soon enough. Same thing with Jehovah's witness type situations.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you don't like the conversation you can tell him that, but how do you think some of these startups made it. They were hustling. Airbnb sold obama o's. I can't blame people for trying. I am not a fan of MLM, but a lot of times people get breaks by hustling.</comment>


Five Reasons Why Twitter Will Kill TweetDeck - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/18/five-reasons-why-twitter-will-kill-tweetdeck/ <comment><AUTHOR> I would have thought that TweetDeck would have provided the right ecosystem partner for Tweeter to thrive!</comment>


Hard Truths for New Software Developers - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/7-hard-truths-about-starting-a-career-as-a-developer-z56u301p <comment><USER2> I get the exact opposite takeaway from:

> 7\. Your evaluative metrics have shifted

Yes they've shifted, but the author implies that the success in the workforce needs more rigour than school. It's the complete opposite. Your stuff needs to work in school, and your prof will grade it accordingly. In the workforce, the person 'grading' your work will likely be a product owner who just wants to get the ticket closed. You will hear things like:

* "Let's do an MVP."

* "Let's focus on the happy path."

* "How hard can it be? You're just adding a button."

* "Let's close the ticket and we can create a new ticket if we need to."

You will not hear:

* "This is important, so get it right."

* "Your code was wrong. Let's discuss"

You'll often be stuck with code that you know is flawed, that you want to fix, but the organisation won't give you time to fix it until it's too late.

<comment><USER3> Depends on where you work. My time at Microsoft was much closer to what you said I will not hear.

There was a parable they used to use in training about how a young developer found a flaw that would only happen "one in a million" times - not worth fixing. An older developer does the math on how many times the feature might run across the total userbase and found we'd be annoying millions of users.

Microsoft did have a pseudo hazing ritual where you were forced to setup your own machine. I was surprised how many developers couldn't do that. I was further surprised that ability to do so wasn't correlated with skill. Being able to find help if you didn't know was very highly correlated though.

<comment><USER4> Do you mean you were forced to assemble your computer, part by part?

<comment><USER3> They were pre assembled from DELL or HP. You had to take everything out of the boxes hook up monitors, etc. The hard part was installing the OS, drivers, and getting your build environment going. One very excellent developer did not know what a driver was. It was that experience that forced me to reevaluate my biases.

I had a few friends there in the late 80s/early 90s apparently at that time everyone watched with great anticipation to see if you could figure out the IRQ settings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a bit wishy washy but generally scans true. For a newbie 2 and 6 are what I'd consider the main points.

2\. You will not get as much help as you need \- Because you're the new kid and they are dropping you on a legacy configuration job. Welcome to support baby. This ain't FAANG. You're not getting help because no body knows how to deal with what you looking after.

6\. You won't understand everything you're doing And truthfully neither will your peers. Someone will understand saml, they will do the saml and you'll try not to mess it up. Someone will understand the pipeline well, and you'll try not to mess it u. Some will understand the container system etc.

My own hard truth: 8\. If you write doco it will be something you can show you boss that will set you apart. Writing is hard. Expressing technical ideas in writing is very hard.

<comment><USER6> > Writing is hard. Expressing technical ideas in writing is very hard.

That.

I'm always baffled by the amount of positive feedback a well written document or well-structured presentation can get you as opposed to weeks of hard work and craftsmanship that no non-technical person is ever going to notice.

<comment><USER7> The work that will impress the most is usually found at the boundaries between skillsets, not in the nitty-gritty of one feild.

It's the bikeshed problem in reverse. Nobody can understand your reactor design well enough to be impressed by the impressive things you did. They can have their socks knocked off by your bikeshed though. Even if your reactor design would get positive feedback from fellow reactor designers and your bikeshed is a laughing stock among bikeshed builders.

Not to say that technical writing is frivolous or lower skilled as bike sheds are to reactor design, this is just the go-to story about approachability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sounds like a dad trying to tell his kid how hard it was for them growing up. None of these bullets are a promise and most of them are pretty condisending and seems to just be a rant about all the things that didn't work out for him but that feels like it's because he was expecting to have his hand held alot more which is something I've never assumed.

<comment><USER9> >it's because he was expecting to have his hand held alot more which is something I've never assumed

If anything I've found I feel more supported at work than I ever did at university. Hand helping? No. But I can ask questions if I've spent a while on something and am totally stuck, we're generally all working towards common goals on projects so we'll collaborate and try to help each other. I also get regular feedback at code review time.

Huge contrast to my time at university where for some courses lecturers wouldn't turn up to their own office hours, or answer emails. Useful feedback was generally scarce, occasionally not provided at all and it was difficult to remedy failure.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. Work is in most ways easier than school. If you're lucky enough to find yourself in a highly sane and functional organization (at the level you deal with it, at least) it's life on fucking _easy mode_.

High school's probably the hardest time of my life so far by a long shot, and I'm entering middle age. So, so much work, very little of it of any value to me or to others (and I have a pretty expansive view of what sorts of education are valuable, I'm not a "if it's not part of my narrow field I don't care about it, who needs the humanities" sort), terrible hours, high stress.

Even college was easy by comparison—15 hours of classes plus 15 hours of homework and studying (unless you fuck up selecting classes or get unlucky you shouldn't have it worse than that, and may have it _much_ better) and often waking up after the sun rises? Rarely having something assigned one day and due the very next? Practically a vacation! High school was torture and I wasn't even bullied or anything. Worse there were people telling me it's the "best time of my life". No wonder kids are depressed.

<comment><USER11> For me, HS was easy and college was brutal. But I agree that short of a startup, work is much easier and should be.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Great Employees Are Not Replaceable - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/amyanderson/2013/02/13/great-employees-are-not-replaceable/

<comment><USER2> Funny, I don't think my company agrees</comment>


Ask HN:  Recommendations for a decent employment lawyer in SF? - <AUTHOR>

I am a contract employee at a startup.  My contract officially ended Oct 31, but I still put in, at their request, 35hrs/ week at the company.
I have yet to get paid for EITHER Oct or Nov.
I'm not looking to sue, but my emails/conversations are not getting me anywhere., and I'm not sure what else to do.
I'm pretty sure I have another job lined up.  I would have left earlier, but I wasn't certain of employment rights in CA, and I knew if I left I would never see my cash. <comment><USER2> Shoot me an email and I can put you in contact with someone who should be able to help or who at least can give you a solid recommendation for a specialist. (doubtful that's needed)</comment>


Tentacle simulation using inverse kinematics - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/soulwire/Muscular-Hydrostats

<comment> TD-Linux As usual for github.io links, you need to either disable mixed content blocking, or turn of HTTPS Everywhere for this demo to work.

</comment><comment><USER2> Lovely work. It's one of the sketch.js examples - [http://soulwire.github.io/sketch.js/](http://soulwire.github.io/sketch.js/) \- it's worth looking at some of the others if you enjoy that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty impressive work, though the end result ends up seeming more like hair than tentacles to me.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I was aware of its use for skeletal animation, but didn't realize it also could be used to simulate anime hair so well. It turns out it's behind AMD's TressFX Hair.

[http://technologybehindmagic.tumblr.com/post/80710612110/tre...](http://technologybehindmagic.tumblr.com/post/80710612110/tressfx- hair-simulation-for-lara-croft-tomb)

<comment><USER5> I actually seem to prefer the TressFx "Off" in the demo. Still in the uncanny valley territory with the "On" stuff.

For example, in the first demo scene, she's hanging upside down, but only her pony tail is hanging down... the rest of her hair remains "up". Not realistic at all and ruins the effect for me completely... I'll take the "Off" stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the artistic concept, and the demo is pretty impressive.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very nice! My cat also found it quite fascinating... :)

</comment><comment><USER8> something something Japan

<comment> TD-Linux The future of eroge has never looked so bright.</comment></comment>


Redis Lua sandbox escape - <AUTHOR> http://benmmurphy.github.io/blog/2015/06/04/redis-eval-lua-sandbox-escape/ <comment><AUTHOR> Redis 2.8.21 and 3.0.2 are out fixing the issue. The patch was provided by Ben Murphy directly (the same researcher uncovering the issue). So two times thanks to Ben. Moreover he was gentle enough to wait my geological times to integrate the patches...

</comment><comment><USER2> I am very pleased to see people building upon my Lua bytecode research, and I wouldn't be surprised to see more applications with embedded Lua which are exploitable like this.

<comment><USER3> nginx is the first thing that occurred to me?

<comment><USER4> Definitely, but Lua is specifically designed to be easily embeddable, it is used all over: [https://sites.google.com/site/marbux/home/where-lua-is- used](https://sites.google.com/site/marbux/home/where-lua-is-used)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Talk about transparency, thanks for sharing this so quickly Salvatore.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you jonesetc, the min I can do is to acknowledge the great work of the researcher that found the issue and patched Redis! Thanks to his work we'll be a bit safer :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why isn't POST a synonym for QUIT?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like a good idea... Does not fix everything but at least it should make it harder to exploit it without direct access.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's why you should never allow loading Lua bytecode. Disallowing it is trivial, don't know why they didn't do it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Has there been any similar research on LuaJIT? It uses its own completely different bytecode.

<comment><USER9> Mike Pall has emphasized on various occasions that he believes that sandboxing Lua (while discussing LuaJIT issues, but refering to Lua in general) is reasonably possible only by considering the whole (OS) process as the sandbox: "The only reasonably safe way to handle untrusted Lua scripts is to isolate them in a process context and to make use of per-process quotas/limits provided by the operating system." ([http://lua- users.org/lists/lua-l/2011-02/msg01106.html](http://lua- users.org/lists/lua-l/2011-02/msg01106.html)) - there were other occasions. However, I am not aware of a bytecode related discussion in this regard. And yes, it uses different bytecode - and a different intermediate representation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is very hard to sandbox lua properly. Embedded scripting sounds good, but in most cases is more of a liability.

<comment><AUTHOR> When you let a program run other, externally provided programs, there are always risks. I agree. But in the case of Redis Lua scripting, the risks were definitely counter balanced by what the community did with this feature in the latest years. Today is hard to imagine Redis without Lua scripting capabilities.

<comment><USER11> It is much easier to sandbox Lua than most other scripting languages.

If you have a very adversarial security model, do not offer your users any chance to run in-process Turing-complete scripts. But if you do want that feature, Lua is the best language I can think of (at least that is not a LISP).

Lua bytecode has been known to be vulnerable for a long time, which is why there is no more bytecode sanitizer in the language. If you load untrusted code from Lua, always use mode "t". This is documented in Lua 5.3: [http://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/manual.html#pdf- load](http://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/manual.html#pdf-load)

If you want to implement a Lua sandbox, start with this post by Lua author: [http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2013-12/msg00406.html](http://lua- users.org/lists/lua-l/2013-12/msg00406.html) and this repository by a prominent member of the Lua community: [https://github.com/kikito/sandbox.lua](https://github.com/kikito/sandbox.lua)</comment></comment></comment>