How to talk about yourself in a developer interview - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/04/27/how-to-talk-about-yourself-in-an-interview/?utm_content=buffer74fe2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> > What is the hardest technical problem you have run into?

I never seem to find a quick good answer for this.

Maybe I just almost never work on REAL hard things.

So my question to you, HNers, is :

What is the hardest technical problem YOU have run into?

I am really interested to know what you would consider 'hardest'.. It's probably not going to be something like 'I changed the css property value from "display: block" to "display: inline-block"..'

<comment><USER3> I have no idea how to answer this question. There have been some problems where someone was stuck for weeks, and I came in and coded up a solution in a day. That seems, in some sense, good evidence of being hard, but those problems never seem hard to me. The reverse happens to me too, where someone else solves a problem that was hard for me, and it's easy to them. Is that a hard problem? It was hard to me, but the problem was easy if I saw it the right way, which I didn't.

Last year, I came up with a solution to a problem that we'd been solving sub- optimally for years. My solution is arguably optimal (given a certain set of assumptions) and requires multiple orders of magnitude less code than the previous solution. The solution is the core part of a paper that was recently accepted to a top conference in its field. That sounds like it might be good evidence the problem was a hard problem, but in fact the solution just involved writing down a formula that anyone who was exposed to probability in high school could have written down, if it had occurred to them that the problem could be phrased as a probability problem (that is, the solution involved multiplying a few probabilities and then putting that in a loop). When I described the idea to a co-worker (that you could calculate the exact probability of something, given some mildly unrealistic but not completely bogus assumptions), he immediately worked out the exact same solution. It wasn't an objectively hard problem because it's a problem many people could solve if you posed the problem to them. The hardest part was probably having the time to look at it instead of looking at some other part of the system, which isn't a hard "technical problem".

Another kind of problem I've solved is doing months of boring work in order to produce something that's (IMO) pretty useful. No individual problem is hard. It's arguably hard to do tedious work day in and day out for months at a time, but I don't think people would call that "technically hard".

I'm with you. Maybe I never work on "REAL hard things"? How would I tell?

<comment><USER4> It's all relative. Sometimes solutions require insights. Other times solutions involve a ton of grinding. Many people have a tendency to overemphasize the first and greatly underemphasize the second, even though the grinding may actually be harder than devising clever solutions.

We build tools that read and write Excel files (open source library: [https://github.com/sheetjs/js-xlsx](https://github.com/sheetjs/js-xlsx)) There are plenty of very difficult problems involving ill-specified aspects of the various file formats and errors in specifications, but it is largely a matter of grinding and finding files in the wild that capture the behavior you want to understand. Those are "difficult" in the sense that people still get these things wrong (related: recently a bug in the Oracle SmartView corrupted US Census XLS exports, which boiled down to an issue in calculating string lengths with special characters) but they don't feel difficult since most of the work didn't involve any really clever insights.

IMHO the hardest problem is now fairly straightforward: How do you enable people to test against confidential files? The solution involves running the entire process in the web browser using FileReader API: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/FileReader](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/FileReader) , and that is an obvious technical solution in 2017 but few thought it was even possible when we started.

<comment><USER5> That's actually my default response when people intimate the work I do must be complex / I must be clever - it's really just hard graft. Sometimes you just have to be willing / stubborn enough to chip away at a problem that initially seems insurmountable. Sure, the more knowledge you accumulate, the faster you can figure out when to look, but often enough you just need to roll up your sleeves and bisect your search space.

I can imagine you get some pretty warty excel files. I mostly get PDF for my sins. I'm sure, like me, you've spent hours taking bits out of files until they work as expected and then figuring out what the difference is :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you don't agree with this slightly-contrived (I'm talking about the 'start with punchline', specifically) storytelling technique endorsed here, at the very least, please be aware of the STAR technique commonly used in behavioral interviews.

One benefit of using the STAR technique is that you are not going to ramble. It should not take you more than 1 minute to fully lay out the Situation, Task, Action, Result. After that "executive summary", if they want you to go more in depth, the interviewer(s) can ask you.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation,_Task,_Action,_Resul...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation,_Task,_Action,_Result)

<comment><USER7> You _could_ use the RATS technique. ;)

I feel like STAR is important in the same way and for the same reason as 'start with the punchline'. Both are good ideas, and both are aiming for 'keep it short and relevant.' Which, having interviewed and hired many people over the years, I'd have to say is reasonably good advice.

There are plenty of exceptions to both of these ideas though. I probably have more trouble getting engineers to elaborate on something than I have with them going on for too long. I quite enjoy a candidate who will help me carry a conversation, who will ask questions of me, who will offer and inject relevant or interesting side-details into their story. Going on a tangent isn't a bad thing unless it's negative or irrelevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is one of the best blogs on the topic and as someone who has easily cracked all big tech company interviews I can say this is a good piece of advice.

I will make following broad points:

1\. Never walk into that room without practicing. Practice before a mirror, practice before a friend, practice in a car. Have a written script and optimise it to remove redundancy, highlight achievements etc.

It is not about repeating what you have practiced but having a free flowing conversation where you don't have to struggle for words, sentences all while maintaining a confident posture.

2\. Converse not interview

A lot of people fail to keep the conversation going. It is not like a FBI investigation. It is more like a friendly banter. Think of a scenario where you are talking to a potential roomie. It is okay to walk out of that interview without an offer but then you should feel good about having conversed with another geek just like you.

\---

Maintain the mindset outside of interview preparation. Most people fail at this.

Good interview preparation begins months ahead. You need to look at your co- worker's code, give them feedback, learn to make needless improvements in your existing code, solve algorithms and discuss technical problems on stack overflow and else where. Built a mindset where you are able to talk about technical work to other people. Speak more, listen more and advice more at least 3 months ahead.

<comment><USER9> If that's what it takes to get a job as an engineer at the big companies, it's not particularly surprising that the quality of their engineers has declined as they've grown.

The skills of a con artist are not related to the ability to build good systems.

<comment><USER10> Conversely, the skills to build good systems are not related to working effectively with others. There's probably a balance that needs to be struck, though they're also not mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER11> > _the skills to build good systems are not related to working effectively > with others_

Yes they are if you're talking about the types of systems that large companies have. It is in fact so difficult that I believe it's a considerable advantage to have scopes small enough to be manageable by a single engineer, but inherent complexity is often well beyond that, especially for very profitable business engines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > If you've been through interviews at some companies that are not as good at > interviewing, then you probably had some questions on your list such as

> Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

 _Dead_.

> Why do you want to work here?

 _You have money._

> How do you handle disagreements with coworkers?

 _Attempt constructive engagement, and if that doesn 't work then shun them._

<comment><USER13> What are your strengths and weaknesses?

<comment><USER12> Honesty and honesty.

<comment><USER14> You forgot "humor".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see some criticism on this point, but for me this passage is a gem.

> In general, real stories are told chronologically backwards. This is why we > start off with a punchline. In contrast, practiced stories are told > chronologically forwards. It's a solid indication as the interviewer that > the person is reciting something they have committed to memory if they tell > the story forwards, and in turn it's significantly more likely that the > story isn't entirely true.

I have a friend who - bless his heart, I adore him, but can't get a quick story out to save his life. Every point he makes he reserves the punchline for last, and he starts by going on a back-story tangent first which usually forks into multiple back-stories. I've been trying to nudge him to turn it around and give away the punchline first, but he's deeply convinced that good stories are like movies and need to have a backstory followed by a narrative arc that doesn't make it's final point until most of the way through act 3.

<comment><USER15> Oh man, that's me for sure. I always backstory my tales to death. It does successfully take a minor conversation and turn it into an elaborate and interesting discourse but yes, as you say, it's not focused on the original punch line.

<comment><USER16> I never realized it until now, but I think I might be doing that as well. I will try to be mindful of that. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > If you give them a resume, expect questions about stuff you worked on at > your past jobs. If you gave them a link to your Github profile, expect > questions about your projects. If you gave them a link to your Stack > Overflow account, expect questions about some of your answers.

On my Linkedin (and also resume etc.) I give a link to my blog / github. Every time I've been asked about it in an interview setting, it was actually when _I_ was the one conducting the interview, and the interviewee was trying to impress. Much as it pains me to say, I don't think side projects are a good way to bolster your CV, at least in my field.

<comment><USER18> I've only asked questions about Github projects when they have something on there wasn't obviously from schooling or just garbage they threw on there to keep for later. I'm pretty certain we're in a different industry, but I'm still surprised nobody has asked about your Github stuff, assuming you've put decent things on there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Google has published some of their data on this and behavioral questions about teamwork (e.g. handling disagreements) are reasonable and can be valuable. Software development is usually a team activity. The rest of this post is a useful, if anecdotally sourced, guide to answering the more technical class of behavioral questions. It should include a block on follow up questions. Good behavioral interviewers, like you might find at Google or Amazon, will ask specific follow ups for each question. See: [http://www.businessinsider.com/google-laszlo-bock- interview-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-laszlo-bock-interview- questions-2015-4)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for posting this. One thing I didn't write about is the objectiveness of interviews (felt like a different topic). Just about any question can be okay as long as it follows a few simple rules. 1) if you ask a question, you should have an expectation of what you're looking for as a result in some quantifiable way and 2) how does that result affect your decision to hire or not. The worst interviewers usually don't have an answer for #1 there and they probably decided to hire you or not very soon after you opened your mouth for the first time. This article fails to state why each of these questions is valuable and what you should be looking for as a result of asking any of them. With the addition of that, it would be a much better article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Let's translate shall we?

> What is the hardest technical problem you have run into?

"Tell me an unverifiable story in which you're the hero."

I really hate this question:

> Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Any post on HN about interviews draws a ton of comments, and they're usually the same comments as every other post on the subject.

Honestly at this point having gone through a reasonably large number of interviews I think it comes down to brushing up on basic CS knowledge and, more importantly, whether or not they like you. As much as we like to make interviews dispassionate assessments of proficiency it really does seem like basic chemistry is the key issue. And honestly that makes a certain amount of sense: most people don't want to work with someone they dislike.

<comment><USER21> Also, how bad they need to fill that position. You will get waaay less bullshit if they are in hurry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good advice. My first (sometimes only) question when I interview people is: Tell me about your favorite project.

<comment><USER23> This is a good question if your goal is to hire people who can talk a good talk about an unverified favorite project. It also assumes that someone has a clear favorite project ready to discuss. People who do not are put at a disadvantage. (Though I do understand this question is well-intentioned.)

The article doesn't really justify the process people go through as a good one. People who think they have a good approach to interviewing, but their sample size is too small to back it up or worse, present an opportunity to people who are good at telling stories but may not have the skills to go along with the story in the end. People who hire based on the story-telling experience will eventually get burned.

I think someone should read this and feel a little worried. This is story- telling. People who might argue that telling a story is being able to communicate---it's merely one form of communication of many that are needed depending on the work environment, and results in a blind spot for your team's hiring process.

<comment><USER24> Having done many interviews, mentored interns and full employees, I'd argue storytelling is a _key aspect_ of performing our job in a larger team. Perhaps I'm being too liberal in my definitions, but I see substantial overlap between "talk about your last project" (and then digging into pitfalls, hacks, workarounds, conflicts; and mind you, I don't mean just PASSION projects, literally any work prior one can speak fluently on) and "tell me how you want to spec this architecture; why".

Much of how we discuss what we do can't be empirically precise, unambiguous, and scientific. Certainly the more social and abstract aspects of our jobs begin to sound, as you put it, like storytelling.

(To be clear, it's far from the only thing I look for, and can be taught/learned to a degree, but I consider it as a key skill in the broader bucket of "communication"; alongside problem solving and base competencies. And like programming itself, having some experience helps.)

<comment><USER23> As I mentioned, this is playing into the fallacy that telling a story during the interview is equivalent to the communication skills required for performing the job.

It confuses story-telling performance during an interview, and the stresses of a success/fail situation, with the type required to perform real work.

Mistaking "overlap" for all-encompassing. Sure, there's overlap. There's overlap in being able to type up a coherent response to a post on Hacker News, but it doesn't make me more qualified for your position.

It fails because it assumes that the candidate has a single defined favorite project. If you try to make the question more broad, then it becomes so open- ended that it is hard to equally compare candidates on it. It becomes random chance that a candidate discusses a project in a way conducive to doing the job. Where if more precise or structured, it might weed out people who can talk passionately about a personal project from those who can constructively explain to a manager the challenges of a project.

It also starts stretching it into saying that everything is story-telling so as to make the term meaningless. I agree it is to some degree, but it's important to try to stick with meaningful mental models that can make predictive assessments about candidates.

The huge problem is there are people without the skills who can tell a good story. This process let's these people through, while ignoring good candidates who may not perform well on this interview question.

<comment><USER25> All I see here is excuses. A good software engineer has to be able to communicate freely and be confident and decisive in what they say. Asking a question like this expresses all of these things, and being an experienced interviewer also allows you to notice when its a little forced (when a person is very introverted), or when they are making stuff up (thats why you ask more specific follow up questions) etc.

I see more people having the skills but not being able to tell the story or communicate in a meaningful way. Seems to be a huge deal with software engineers, the communication piece is just disregarded in most cases. Thats when you end up with engineers who are locked away in their own rooms and not put in contact with any external stakeholders.

<comment><USER23> To be a good engineer requires a number of skills. You named one. Knowing what arbitrary conclusion a random interviewer wants to hear and will draw is not one of those.

You can be a great communicator AND frequently not answer this question in a way that an interviewer wants to hear. There are more excuses for bad interview practices than anything else here.

People vastly overestimate their ability to detect lying and shouldn't rely on that. How do you know when someone fooled you? You don't. Why risk that when there are alternative and better methods?

Many engineers don't realize they are self-rationalizing their own interview process without any rigorous evidence. This is the opposite of good engineering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Never talk about yourself; steer the interview to being about a problem they are solving with work and help them run through how you would solve the problem as if it's a meeting and you are working with them. Rarely fails.

<comment><USER27> I'd say it's not either or. Do both. Give a short summary of who you are with related projects you worked on. Explain shortly how these experiences made you an authority on their problem. Then explain how you would handle that problem of theirs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> >In all likelihood, the interviewer doesn't know what they are looking for with these questions, and they are just being used to fill time.

Wait a sec -- just because the author of the article doesn't know how to get value from those questions doesn't mean that those questions hold no value. It is true that they won't give you information to help you in a tech screen, or to gauge the value of where to initially place a candidate on a team. But if you are trying to decide between a few candidates of equal skill, and trying to figure out which one will work better in a team environment, which will fit more smoothly into the personal dynamics between team members, who will grow better as the company grows, who might be a better leader or follower, and what their trajectory might be as the company and team evolves, these questions can lead you down those paths.

Dismissing those questions as useless makes me think the author doesn't care about the people as individuals, but just as machines to be plugged in to produce code. And that doesn't sound like someone I would want to work for.

<comment><USER29> It's ironic actually. The author touts told stories of prior work as key, and degrades attempts at measuring candidate conscientiousness. Meanwhile, strongest known measures of job performance are an actual work sample (r=.26), rather than ability to describe a prior project, and measures of conscientiousness (r=.15).

On conscientiousness:

Barrick, Murray R., and Michael K. Mount. "The big five personality dimensions and job performance: a meta‐analysis." Personnel psychology 44.1 (1991): 1-26.

On work samples:

Roth, Philip L., Philip Bobko, and L. Y. N. N. McFARLAND. "A meta‐analysis of work sample test validity: Updating and integrating some classic literature." Personnel Psychology 58.4 (2005): 1009-1037.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was updating my CV recently. I don't have the longest employment history (switched careers, then stayed at a job for 5 years), so I padded it out with a few short paragraphs of projects I'd worked on.

It actually worked really well - it brought some projects I'd forgotten about back into my mind making it easier to talk about them, and gave the interviewers specifics to latch on to.

<comment><USER31> More importantly, it shows accomplishments, not job duties. And that's what everyone wants to see - how your wins there will translate into wins here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I find I'm more willing to talk about myself if engaged in meaningful dialogue.

For example, I get this a lot as an opening question, mainly from crooters (actual hiring managers almost never do this): "What are your skills?"

You mean like numchuck skills, bow-hunting skills? If you don't know what kind of skills I have that could possibly be germane to the positions I'm looking for, you obviously didn't even read my résumé, which means you don't have a clue, which means I am hanging up on you because obviously you can't help me.

If you say "Can you tell me about your role at company X, what sort of challenges you had, etc." I'm more willing to open up.

</comment><comment><USER33> Being prepared to talk is important. Knowing when to shut up is equally important.

Recently interviewed a candidate who seemed promising, until they started to rant. I didn't want to interrupt them because I was hoping there was a point to be made at the end of the rant ... but in the end it was just 5+ minutes worth of "my current job isn't fair and everything sucks and everyone who is better than me really sucks too".

Didn't hire.

</comment><comment><USER34> All that matters is having a good conversation and not appearing completely incompetent.

After an enjoyable conversation, the hiring person will rationalize wanting you all by themselves, even if they have to make up / project qualities you've never demonstrated.

95% of the time, there's nothing rational about hiring.

</comment><comment><USER14> For younger candidates, how about questions like: "Do you have a passion for this industry? Why?" and "What have you done in the past that demonstrates your commitment to completing anything you set your mind to?" For older candidates, how about questions like: "What do you consider your driving factor?" (with possible answers like "good benefits" or "complex challenges" or "teamwork") and "What sort of challenges do you see in this field/industry and how would you go about solving them?" (with acceptable answers from technical development solutions to "let's outsource" or something creative - something that demonstrates their wisdom, even if the field isn't their expertise).

</comment><comment><USER35> _What is the hardest technical problem you have run into?_

Almost always asked from companies that don't have problems to offer even remotely comparable to the "war stories" they're expecting to you rattle off -- at least not for the position _you 're_ applying for, anyways.

</comment><comment><USER36> Also, As well as words, I would recommend practising the key diagrams that represent the projects(s) - so you leave enough space for the important elements, and don't fall of edge of page/board.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think behavioral and "tell me a time when" questions can easily be gamed, so I question the effectiveness of asking them. Sometimes I forget specific domain knowledge around a project I worked on 1+ companies ago. But I still have to list it on my resume and thus be able to speak to it...... so I just approximate the details. I imagine you could just full on lie as long as you can detail a technical problem and provide a solution to it.

</comment><comment><USER38> > What is the hardest technical problem you have run into?

well technically, the hardest problems I have encountered are not technical

</comment><comment><USER39> Is this actually useful to people? Please don't give me non-answers like "well it got upvoted.."

</comment><comment><USER40> When I read articles about job interviews, I always wonder what is the correlation coefficient between "being good at interviews" and "being good at doing your actual job".

</comment><comment><USER41> Interesting. I naively assumed that the most important part of preparing for a developer job interview was to prepare for the coding exercises -- the stereotypical algorithm stuff.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is incredible, thanks for sharing!</comment>


Startup Weekend's first events in India - <AUTHOR> http://delhi.startupweekend.org/

<comment><USER2> Startup Weekend Delhi is in full swing. We've got the founders of Naukri.com, Seedfund and The Morpheus speaking and mentoring the teams as well as other really awesome people mentoring, speaking and building awesome startups!</comment>


Goldman Sachs: Apple planning thinner iPad with camera, mini USB - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/09/27/goldman_sachs_says_apple_planning_thinner_ipad_with_camera_mini_usb.html <comment><USER2> After first picking up a v1 iPad you knew there were a lot of trade offs to get it out the door. Pretty impressive to build billion dollar beta products, but they are beta products none the less.</comment>


Apple disappoints me more each day - <AUTHOR> http://aurelien.malisart.be/articles/apple-disappoints-me-more-each-day.html

<comment><USER2> I don't know if the author has an Apple Store near him, but my < 2 year old MacBook Air had a battery that wasn't holding a charge either, and I went to the store and they replaced it in about 20 minutes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, the nearest from me is in Paris, so about 250 km.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you recognize good work and celebrate wins at your company? - <AUTHOR>

We are prototyping a product and I'm curious to hear how you or your company recognizes good work on a regular basis from each member of your team? Are there any tools you use out there? If you could please include your company size in your response that would be great! <comment><USER2> First company (1500 people): The manager said a sincere thanks and you were assigned a higher profile project / and/or simply gained an increased level of trust from others. That was enough, given the nature of the company and the extremely good people it employed (world class).

A later company (~250,000 people): Quarterly awards with small bonuses, going to 1/50 of the top performers in the office (my office was a couple thousand people). The awards were taken quite well, with staff pinning them to their desk. What mattered for some staff was the recognition, and for some the aspiration (as faster rising, through the extreme hierarchy, staff tended to get awards more often). Frankly, it never appealed, and only motivated staff at the most junior levels. Those more savvy would use these awards as negotiation tolls in performance and salary reviews.

Current company (~1500 people): The boss just promotes who makes her feel good, and lets everyone have the freedom to do what they want as long as they also do their job. She's also wise to ass-lickers (unlike the previous one mentioned). Harmony is encouraged, so no special events, just promotions and increased levels of freedom.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Interesting to see at 1500 no structured feedback process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is for really small wins, but we have a #celebration channel in slack. It actually works surprisingly well.

</comment><comment><USER4> We'd love to but we simply cannot afford it, especially since we're bootstrapping. That's the sad part about boostraping. You spent most time trying to keep food on the table, than actually building something awesome.

<comment><USER5> On one of my Navy leadership courses the reservist instructor said the most positive and motivating piece of recognition he got was his boss buying him a thank you card and quietly putting it on his desk when he was busy.

If you know your people you should be able to work out what motivates them and come up with something specific. Whatever it is a chunk of money is a very poor motivator as it becomes expected and thus devalued very quickly.

<comment><USER4> That last sentence was very deep and helped put things in perspective. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wine, always have wine at the office to celebrate wins.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think we hand out movie cards. We're a smallish BigCo, owned by a larger BigCo.

</comment><comment><USER8> High fives and hugs.

</comment><comment><USER9> 3-4 months pay bonus

<comment><USER10> Holy cow, either they have an unusually low salary or they are making a boat load on those bonuses. Good for you mate!</comment></comment>


Web tool 'as important as Google' - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8026331.stm <comment><USER2> The proof of this pudding is in the eating. We'll all be testing it out with questions and seeing if we are satisfied with the results.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its kind of disappointing that they aren't trying to parse natural language. I know that would make it a ton more complex (and possibly beyond our capacity to do), but to me that would be truly the next generation from our current flavor of search engines. If I could truly ask a question and have the computer understand what I'm talking about to return an answer, rather than just trying to match keywords. That's Wolfram's goal, I think, but I don't know if they can really get there without parsing human language.

<comment><USER4> They do parse natural language. In fact, that was one of the biggest problems they had to overcome, and is the main reason they currently have no plans for creating different versions for other languages.

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wolframalpha_our_first_...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/wolframalpha_our_first_impressions.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The "computational knowledge engine", as the technology is known, will be available to the public from the middle of May this year."

Is "the middle of May" the result of a computation? If so, then a more precise model may take until "the middle of June".

</comment><comment><USER6> Wolfram is a salesman first and foremost. I'll believe it when I see it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Stephen Wolfram 'as self-important as all get-out'. Wolf has been cried; _A New Kind of Science_ left little doubt that "expert opinions" of Wolfram's work are worth a piss-hole in the snow.</comment>


New Firefox beta is much better than old (esp gmail) - <AUTHOR> http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/beta/ i always found firefox would be laggy when you tabbed to gmail<p>new beta firefox has no lag! <comment><USER2> _New Firefox beta is much better than old (esp gmail)_

Can someone get rid of the super-editorialized headline that is not even remotely referred to on the linked page?

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't matter how fast IonMonkey can crunch when Gecko can't keep up to render it. Gecko is sloow compare to Trident and Webkit. Someone please smack some sense into Mozilla.

</comment><comment><USER4> I assume this is referring to Javascript speed, because the new JS engine (IonMonkey) is integrated into FF18.</comment>


CenturyLink Transforms, Rebrands as Lumen - <AUTHOR> https://news.lumen.com/2020-09-14-CenturyLink-Transforms-Rebrands-as-Lumen-R <comment><USER2> Theodore Vail's vision that became realized through AT&T - "universal telephone service throughout the USA". Job done.

Mountain Bell/USWest/Qwest/CenturyLink/Lumen vision -

"Forward Looking Statements

Except for historical and factual information, the matters set forth in this release identified by words such as "believe," "plans," "will" and similar expressions are forward-looking statements as defined by the federal securities laws, and are subject to the "safe harbor" protections thereunder. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and are based on current expectations only, are inherently speculative, and are subject to a number of assumptions, risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. Actual events and results may differ materially from those anticipated, estimated, projected or implied by us in those statements if one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or if underlying assumptions prove incorrect. Factors that could affect actual results include but are not limited to: uncertainties due to events outside of our control regarding the impact of COVID-19 health and economic disruptions; the effects of competition from a wide variety of competitive providers; our ability to attain our key operating imperatives, including simplifying and consolidating our network, simplifying and automating our service support systems and strengthening our relationships with customers; our ability to safeguard our network; possible changes in the demand for our products and services; our ability to implement our operating plans and corporate strategies; our ability to effectively retain and hire key personnel; our ability to meet the terms and conditions of our debt obligations and covenants; our ability to maintain favorable relations with our key business partners, suppliers, vendors, landlords and financial institutions; our ability to obtain approvals to implement our above-referenced name change; and other risks set forth or referenced in our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). For all the reasons set forth above and in our SEC filings, you are cautioned not to unduly rely upon our forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements for any reason, whether as a result of new information, future events or developments, changed circumstances, or otherwise. Furthermore, any information about our intentions contained in any of our forward-looking statements reflects our intentions as of the date of such forward-looking statement, and is based upon, among other things, existing regulatory, technological, industry, competitive, economic and market conditions, and our assumptions as of such date. We may change our intentions, strategies or plans without notice at any time and for any reason."</comment>


Ask HN: Low priced commodity hardware - <AUTHOR>

I'm building a consumer routing type device and need some low priced hardware that can run linux.  The hardware needs to be able to support 802.11g/n and have at least one ethernet port (three preferable).
I've built a prototype using the board from pcengines.ch (which is a great bit of kit), however to make this thing commercially viable, i need a board that comes in at about 1/2 the price, say around USD$50 or there abouts.
Does anyone have any ideas/experience in this area they can share? <comment><USER2> Have you seen <http://ubnt.com/airrouter> <http://ubnt.com/routerstation> <http://ubnt.com/powerapn> ? You can replace the firmware with your own.

<comment><AUTHOR> i've not actually, i'll check it out, thx!</comment></comment>


Search Google Docs From Within Gmail - <AUTHOR> http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/new-in-gmail-labs-find-docs-and-sites.html

<comment><USER2> Useful. The cloud has just gotten a tiny bit more convenient. I was a skeptic. Now I use Google Docs almost daily. In my opinion there is no more doubt that Google is right and that in 10 years there will be no more applications that we install on our hard-drives or apps that we install on our phones. The OS will be a browser.

</comment><comment><USER3> What I'd really like though is the ability to attach a file in my Google Docs a/c to an email I am composing in Gmail

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this the beginning of integrating all personal info stored in various Google products under one search box?

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds kind of nice. Though a functional email search would be my preference...</comment>


Supreme Court rules cell phone searches require a warrant (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/supreme-court-cell-phone-privacy-searches <comment><USER2> This is from 2014. The article doesn't say it, but I believe this is Riley vs California. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riley_v._California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riley_v._California)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. We added 2014 above.</comment></comment>


Berlin police find radioactive iodine on playing cards - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42157129 <comment><USER2> You can also get cheating devices [1] where the edges of all the cards are printed with IR barcodes, then a special camera (concealed in a modified phone or car key fob) can tell you upcoming cards by looking at the edge of the deck.

Of course, you need to convince people to play with your deck of cards first, so you can't just walk into a casino with these things.

[1] [https://www.elie.net/blog/security/fuller-house-exposing- hig...](https://www.elie.net/blog/security/fuller-house-exposing-high-end- poker-cheating-devices)

<comment><USER3> Wow what a crazy device! That link led me to Elie Bursztein's youtube channel where he posts all of his defcon talks (or at least a lot of them). They're all really good!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the plot device for an actual novel about a detective hired to solve a casino scam. Don't want to completely spoil it, but it's the main plotline.

<comment><USER5> I wonder if the cards found were inspired by the novel

<comment><USER4> The author said most of the scams in his book come from real life, so it's possible someone did it in the past.

James Swain is the author, the series is his "Tony Valentine" books. Not fantastic writing, but packed full of scams and cons if you enjoy that kind of thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty interesting that the government is checking garbage trucks for radioactivity and also able to trace t back to a specific business.

<comment><USER7> In Germany, garbage is considered a serious issue. There are various levels and ways of mandatory recycling that need to be implemented by everyone, including private households. For example, depending on the city, paper, "Gelber Sack", organic material, and everything else besides special disposables like for example batteries must be seperated, and compliance may be checked, and fines may be handed out in case of violation. Some people moving to Germany are surprised about how serious it is.

This explains why the garbage was checked, and why it was possible to track down the source.

<comment><USER8> It's actually refreshing to know this is happening somewhere, thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER9> About half of the recyclable garbage is still burned along with the regular garbage, because it burns better.

Profit is, after all, more important than the environment. The garbage companies in Germany make somewhere between 50 and 100 billion per year.

<comment><USER10> The garbage companies are burning that stuff because nobody wants to buy it from them. Because often making something by way of recycling uses more resources than the alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Fortunately I125 is not likely to cause severe thyroid damage

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-125](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-125)

<comment><USER12> I got some injected several time when I was a kid (for angiography). As a kid, the fun part was peeing fluorescent liquid (little I knew...).

<comment><USER13> I used to have a friend with a masters in biochemistry. Once he tested a glowstick and determined that the components were completely nontoxic. (He couldn't vouch for all glowsticks, don't try this at home.)

He put each liquid component in a test tube and went out for beers. He poured one tube in a buddy's beer when he wasn't looking, and another in his next beer. Then he went in the restroom and unscrewed the lightbulb.

<comment><USER14> I think that your friend was pulling your leg. The oxalate esters and hydrogen peroxide in a glow stick shouldn't be ingested, though the actual dye that gets excited to fluorescence would be relatively harmless. I also wouldn't expect the concentrations of active materials to remain high enough in urine for the glow reaction to be noticeable, even if all the chemicals were excreted unchanged.

<comment><USER13> He was referring to the military version, would that be the same?

It would not be surprising if he was pulling my leg, we were a group of practical jokers. And this story made me swear off ever doing anything to him; in retrospect maybe that was the intent.

<comment><USER14> Yes, military glow sticks use the same basic chemistry: hydrogen peroxide, diphenyl oxalate or analogs, various excitable dyes that actually produce the different colors.

<comment><USER15> Yep, glow sticks are glow sticks. Ours come in fancy camo packaging though so you know they're suitable for lighting the portaloo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm having a hard time imagining how this hustle works. With the luminous ink or daub the idea is to see the markings from a distance. Here you would think you'd need to be fairly close with a geiger counter to detect the marking. So maybe it was a self-deal game or the dealer was colluding with the cheat? In that case maybe it's more like peeking with a shiner.

<comment><USER17> I wonder if you could build something to detect gamma rays which it sounds like the iodine emits, into a watch, possibly making use of a PIN photodiode.

<comment><USER18> Still... you really need a directional detector to make use of this.

<comment><USER19> Triangulate between two detectors?

<comment><USER20> "Eh, Slim Johnson, whys you always flapping yer arms around whens we playin poker?"

"Shoulder exercises, Bill. Shoulder exercises."

<comment><USER19> Lol oh god, Gary Larson would be proud. Still humor aside I think that you could deploy a partner to be the second point. Still, added complexity and new (albeit less awkward) questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The restaurant in question is in the Marzhan district of Berlin[0].

[0] [https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/polizeibericht/article21267...](https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/polizeibericht/article212675467/Betrueger- setzten-radioaktive-Spielkarten-ein.html) (Article in German)

</comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know which (probably Vietnamese) game that was? Apparently it is played with round cut-outs of playing cards. Here is a photo: [https://www.facebook.com/PolizeiBerlin/photos/a.253825908134...](https://www.facebook.com/PolizeiBerlin/photos/a.253825908134854.1073741828.167233600127419/785902204927219/?type=3&theater)

<comment><USER23> Looks like what casinos do when they throw cards away so they can't be scavenged and used for play.

<comment><USER22> The police explicitly commented that you play with those circular cutouts and confirmed it again after confused questions by users but that could be wrong of course.

<comment><USER23> Ah. I didn't pick that up from the Google translated version I read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What's the legit use of infrared contact lenses? I gather Johnson and Johnson makes them.

<comment><USER25> Firefighting, search and rescue, power line maintenance, home inspection and of course, military/law enforcement night operations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The older generation of vietnamese immigrants came due to the german democratic republic siding with communist vietnam because of the vietnam war. The traditional social order is patriarchal, so I would be surprised if the woman in question wasn't a strawpuppet to some extent.

</comment><comment><USER27> In the linked articles is this awesome piece: "'Laser scam' gamblers to keep £1m" [0].

[0] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4069629.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4069629.stm)

<comment><USER28> I mean, yeah, the only real rules of Roulette are "call it before the ball goes round three times".

Still, probably good they did it at the Ritz in London, rather than back home in Serbia, I have a feeling the outcome could've been very different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This sort of thing is why I would never play cards for nontrivial money outside a regulated club. It's a lot less likely to happen when the owner stands to lose a license worth millions.

</comment><comment><USER30> Pretty soon we'll have a mobile card printer generate new decks right on the spot.

<comment><USER31> And 30 seconds later, we will have remote hacks for the card printers.

<comment><USER32> And a year later, news that Uber knew about the hack but buried it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I guess this way the con men knew when the cards were hot!

</comment><comment><USER34> good police work

</comment><comment><USER35> Wait, so you can gamble at a restaurant?

<comment><USER36> Between closing and opening, yes.</comment></comment>


8 'Aha moments' you need to have before marketing your startup - <AUTHOR> http://ryangum.com/8-aha-moments-needed-before-marketing-your-startup/ <comment><USER2> "Don't think about marketing and growth until you have a product you know customers love. Everything else comes after that"

This implies that the author thinks marketing is a uni-directional endeavour. Is it? I'd always thought it was a bi-directional thing, perhaps I am wrong.

Superfluous disclaimer: I know _nothing_ about marketing.

<comment><USER3> Good point, I wrote a reply on growthhackers.com about this one:

"Perhaps I could have been clearer about the "no marketing" part, I was trying to make a (slightly dramatic?) point that marketing should not be a focus until you reach p/m fit.

Before then, if you HAD to pick between the two, I'd suggest you'll get better bang for your buck if you spend your time focusing on customer & product development.

But you're right, some marketing activities like content give you greater benefits the earlier they're started."</comment></comment>