A humble alternative to technical interviews - <AUTHOR> https://blog.zachwf.com/2019/02/a-humble-alternative-to-technical.html <comment><USER2> "It could also sew some bitterness within the engineering team: it might be seen as unfair that some people can get hired through the nepotistic route, while others have to do the tech loop."

More importantly, it will reinforce your organization's demographics. If your trusted referrers are white and male, their networks will be overwhelmingly white and male and it's just putting up another block toward those not already in the system. If that happens in one company, it's likely not a big deal. If it happens systemically, you'll see a bigger problem.

(People build networks in college, with people of the same demographics -> people use those networks to get people in with a lower bar of entry while those without the benefit of the network will face a barrier that the people that were hired might not have been able to clear.)

The problem is that we don't have a better solution to the technical interview.

<comment><USER3> You're fetishizing "demographics".

It's unfortunately that people don't get their fair chance period. That at times this is evidenced by things that are more visible (black versus white, female versus male) rather than more invisible (extroverted rather than introverted, smiling versus shifty-doesn't-look-you-in-the-eyes) is both unfortunate (there should be no racism!) but also symptomatic of which things we care about and which things we don't.

People discriminated for reasons we don't care about (introverted, can't make eye contact) are at the bottom of the pyramid then. We've decided they don't have "demographics" and don't matter.

<comment><USER4> Of key importance here is that race, gender, etc. are federally protected classes, while introversion is not. Thus, businesses have way more incentives to curtail discrimination against the former than the latter.

<comment><USER5> I know you probably didn't mean to imply otherwise, but it's worth saying out loud: that it's not illegal to discriminate against people with poor social skills does not at all make it ok. The context was ethics, not law, as I read it.

<comment><USER4> Software development is a team activity, thus social skills are important. I don't know if companies are "discriminating" in this area so much as they are simply trying to find people with the right skills for the job.

<comment><USER6> There is several contradicting data points for what is an optimal hiring strategy for a company. We have the old strategy of making members of a team feel like then are kin, a.k.a band of brothers. The military use/used this a lot and the underlying biological theory is that people will sacrifice self- interest for individuals which is perceived as kin, or as the quote goes a person will sacrifice themselves for either two siblings or eight cousins.

The opposite strategy is diversity with the ability for better adaptation. A team with multiple perspectives is said to better anticipate the need of a diverse customer base.

A third strategy is to look at specific risk. If for example theft by employees are a high risk issue then rejecting applicants with correlating traits with high risk for theft would be beneficial, which would be low social economic status, but those correlate to race and ethnic class.

If we look at the issue from the perspective of what benefit a company the most we end up in many cases with massive discrimination. Thus for social reasons we address the issue as an ethical question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I tend to look at a candidate's work history.

If they've worked at least 10 years, as a coder - it's VERY unlikely that they're a complete liar. Especially if you can call former co-workers, or look at code samples they have online on a personal github, or look at their post history on stackoverflow, or things like that.

Even a technical description of prior projects - is a really good indicator of whether they're competent.

Puzzle solving - on the other hand, bears little resemblance to actual job requirements in the real world. It's honestly a dumb way to vet candidates. Would I like to see if a candidate, out of a pack of 5 or so potentially equal candidates, has a better approach to creative problem solving? You bet. But I'm more interested in their inter-personal skills, communication skills, and their instincts towards the ethical challenges we face as engineers. (like: when things go south - and blame starts flying). Who do I want on my team? That's the most important question.

<comment><USER8> "Puzzle solving" is a nice way to dumb down the importance of good software engineering vs good coding skills. This is especially important at the big 4 or 5. They don't really, truly care what languages you know or what stack you know. They will give you the environment to use whatever you want.

What they need is someone who is good at solving problems, which ties into your comment about dealing with bad situations. This is something startups eventually adopt once they mature past needing a web developer to just throw together a website for them, and on to someone who is more flexible and loyal.

So please don't reduce the importance of good engineering down to "puzzles". They are a good indicator of someone who has all those qualities you describe.

And i wouldn't limit anyone to the big 5. If you believe Google's interview is pure memorisation and no problem solving, don't interview with them. My point is a good interview knows the importance of problem solving, whether solved correctly or not, is about how you solve the problem, and so they design their interviews thusly. That's my point which is contrary to the common sentiment here that "puzzle" interviews are a waste of time..

This is especially true when really wealthy companies will teach you the technologies you need to learn. You simply can't teach a good problem solving skillset, though.

<comment><USER9> Good engineering is important. But solving a problem on a whiteboard isn't "good engineering". The ability to solve whiteboard puzzles in a time boxed adversarial setting, is nothing at all like solving large complex engineering problems through "good engineering" practices.

I know plenty of capital E Engineers. None of them have whiteboard interviews. They are expected to solve problems, but none of them are expected to draw schematics for a bridge while someone watches over their shoulders.

No other non-performance based industry has this kind of weird hazing ritual. Whiteboard interviews are nothing more than the current fad--they definitely aren't necessary requirements to hire "good engineers".

<comment><USER8> Do you think the school system also isn't a good way to vet people, then? Since exams are basically just "whiteboard interviews".

<comment><USER9> 1\. Unless you are in a performing arts program, exams aren't really anything like whiteboard interviews. They are much more limited in scope. You generally have more time. There's no one watching your every step. You don't have to talk while solving a problem. They tend to be written by people with at least some formal training in pedagogy. They don't tend to be written and administered by 24 year olds who are trying to prove how smart they are. Your job while in school is to study for exams, so you tend to have more time to do so.

2\. This part is more important. School is about a lot more than exams. Projects were usually about 50% of the grade in CS classes.

If you made it through 4 years of the CS program I went through, you know how to program, or you paid someone to go for you for all 4 years.

So yeah I'd take a B average from my school as proof that you know how to program.

But I wouldn't make it a requirement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I grew up poor, and out of (mechanical) engineering college new a grand total of zero engineers. I would still be unemployed to this day if this type of hiring were the norm (although it is not entirely uncommon). I can also say, that the engineers that we have had come through our organization based on referrals have not been the best quality. They tend to be engineers that are generally likeable, but not very good. Referrals are probably the way with the least friction to hire someone, so any time the way with the least friction is not being used as much, you have to wonder why.

<comment><USER11> > out of (mechanical) engineering college new a grand total of zero engineers

How did you manage to do an engineering degree and not get to know any other engineers?

<comment><USER12> I made friends in college by sharing a dorm and by hanging out on campus. Later I made friends through friends, but those were the essential starting points.

If you're poor, there's a good chance you're not staying in the (often very expensive) dorms, and that you don't have much time to hang out on campus because you have a job. I can imagine this kind of thing making it much harder to make friends.

<comment><USER13> Bingo. I made exactly zero connections while at university. Why? I had a kid young. We both worked to make things float. I did not go to school events, study groups, etc. Once, to finish a group project, we went to a kid's room in a dorm. Literally the only time I was ever in a dorm. My very limited social time was spent with existing friends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't even _want_ the ability to refer someone into my company. That's very risky and puts pressure on me to be right, when I might be wrong. I have referred friends who've been rejected, and I'm glad because that's better than hiring my friend and having them not fit in. Then it's _my_ fault.

I've interviewed and referred many people and made a lot of hiring decisions, I would rather have everyone agree, I don't think the ability for a single person to refer someone past the interview process is a good idea at all.

None of the risks listed even compare to the risk of hiring someone who isn't actually very good or doesn't get along with the team.... and despite thorough interviews that still happens all the time. If the candidate is worth referring, then the interviews will not likely be a problem. Things do go wrong occasionally, but not very often.

Edit: I also meant to add that I think referrals are already weighed very heavily in interviews in my experience. Sometimes even too much. Interviews are already easier for candidates when someone who's respected makes the referral, so to some degree the proposal here already reflects reality.

<comment><USER15> I don't refer friends, I refer former coworkers that I would like to work with again.

Problem is I don't have the same diversity in my referral pool as I'd like to see at work. Last couple of places have been pretty homogenous and I'm less keen on referring people I last worked with ten years ago.

<comment><USER14> Of course. My coworkers are also my friends. By "friend" I mean people I know that I've worked with before and that I like and would vouch for because they're good, as opposed to people I've worked with that I don't like, or social acquaintances.

I'm with you on diversity too, these days I prefer interviewing people I don't know and people with very different backgrounds than mine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use interviews to evaluate a whole lot more than just hire/no-hire.

I'm looking to understand what role someone is going to play in the organization, and to help understand which team a person we're likely going to hire will be a best match for.

We organize our interview loops around this, and a critical part of the conversation in the debrief is role and team matching - not just a hire/no- hire decision. Plus, we use this time to provide feedback to whoever the hiring manager is about the candidate and potential future team member, which streamlines more than just headcount.

Finally, the interview loop is an opportunity to manage cronyism. While we've got a lot of people I trust to refer exclusively strong candidates, I don't trust a single one to make fiat decisions. There's a human element to giving someone that level of decision making authority, and without sharing gory details - I've benefitted from having committee decisions in this situation.

Managing the feelings of referrer's getting their candidates rejected in a hard problem. I've dealt with that in the past a number of ways but don't have a working theory, other than "it's a job, people make mistakes, and hiring is fit and timing as much as it is about technical prowess".

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a no go in large companies, because the large company wants to avoid 'cliques of incompetence' and personal fiefdoms developing, not to mention all of the other problems people have mentioned.

In large organizations, there are too many people for execs to know everyone, so a standardized but rigorous process is better from their perspective.

I say tech's process is better than many other industries processes, which is outsourcing evaluation based on credential prestige.

<comment><USER18> Do it in the same way that ancient empires from the Romans to the Mongols did it- break preexisting relationships with distance. Referrals are posted to "frontier" teams separated sufficiently far away from referrers. Scatter them across the org.

<comment><USER17> Then they have lunch together and talk about work? They would have to work in unrelated things, which is hard to do when everyone is the same kind of profession.

<comment><USER18> Hard for them to become someone's fiefdom when they're all on separate teams. We're talking about FAANG-sized companies here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a bad idea and the person proposing it should feel bad. \-- Every underrepresented group in tech ever, as well as introverts and junior folks or those switching from other specialities

(Seriously, I get that we have problems with pipelines and tech. interviews can be pretty terrible, but this is worse. Respected people are already in a pretty set demographic that's harder to break into, and anyone they've worked with is going to be similar. )

<comment><USER20> I totally agree with you, except the part where the person proposing it should feel bad.

Many people don't realize the unfair advantages their demographic gets, and shaming them for not seeing it is not a good way to get them to see the flaw in their world view. Let's educate instead of shame.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I wouldn't hold to that feeling bad part. It's a Futurama meme that gets lost in the context of no GIFs. I forget that HN is like the internet of my youth. :)

I 100% agree with the idea of using privilege to promote the unprivileged and educate those in our own demographics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > The risk that they will be humiliated at some point during the interviews.

As a candidate, this has happened far more often than I care to admit. I don't take it personally: having worked at many corporations, I know that its usually not any kind of personal animosity or judgement, its just work politics. But the fact remains that it does happen.

<comment><USER22> It happens to me very often but I blame it on circumstances. I typically interview at companies that have started a data science team with one guy fresh out of a Master's or a PhD, who think that his dissertation topic if the end-all of data science, so they will quiz you insistently on scaling issues of a rare alternative to random forest. "I'm sure that with 20 minutes look at the literature, I could answer your question." doesn't cut it. Neither does "I'm happy to talk about the implementation details of my PhD on clustering large scale social graph rapidly." or "I'm interviewing for a leadership position; I'd love to talk to you about my managerial habits." It tends to feel like a relief.

<comment><USER23> How do you feel about questions about principles? They may look like "Are you familiar with regularization in machine learning and why it's used?"

<comment><USER22> Oh, by far that's the more reasonable interview.

That's actually how I test an audience when I speak in public (I might be a bit more specific, like "should you regularise your data before a PCA?"): I ask the question, those who have an opinion, I brand them as "in the know" and I introduce a gesture towards them; and the others, I say that my talk isn't technical, but I re-use both gestures when making that distinction again.

A friend of mine had a brilliant equivalent when talking about data engineering, saying "And we never had any problem after that." [https://youtu.be/ZaAbOKNWGA8?t=210](https://youtu.be/ZaAbOKNWGA8?t=210) A group at the back burst out laughing and you can see him re-use them later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not a great way to increase diversity, and totally incompatible with referral bonuses.

A hidden cost here would also be exposing perceived statuses (eg an engineer who isn't as well respected would have their recommendations denied).

<comment><USER25> >totally incompatible with referral bonuses.

I think it's fair to waive referral bonuses if someone is referred through the "trusted referral" process. If someone is dying for a bonus, they can still steer the candidate towards the company and let them go through the technical loop normally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Trusted referrals have always been a valid approach to getting candidates _in the pipeline_ , as long as it doesn't privilege those candidates over others who came in through other channels.

However, I don't agree with waiving the technical interview.

Sometimes referrers, though well-meaning, have either an outdated or incomplete idea of the candidate. Assessing a candidate's quality is quite a complicated thing, and not everyone does it well though everyone thinks they do. I say this because I've made erroneous referrals myself.

It's a bias-variance tradeoff. If you trust 1-2 key people, and if they are right about a person, good, but if they are wrong they can be very wrong. Whereas if you collect more data points from independent sources, you mitigate the probability of huge errors in hiring, which can be expensive to fix.

Of course there are exceptions. In a world where if Larry Page wanted to bring Jeff Dean on-board a fledgling Google because he's seen his work elsewhere and decides to waive the technical interview, then it's a different story. But I'm not sure if these exceptions abound...

</comment><comment><USER27> I suspect this might work better than expected. The fear is that employees will exercise some form of nepotism that would "lower the bar". That might not happen in practice though. Would love to see an experiment.

<comment><USER28> Aren't there groups who have exercised some form of nepotism to "raise the bar?" Haven't some early stage startups been able to do this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So in summary: If your company has a seemingly broken hiring process that weeds out good people, bypass that process for people your people judge as good, and keep it for everyone else.

I suggest that it is better to fix the hiring process in the firsr place and just run everyone through it.

</comment><comment><USER30> One big issue in hiring is that _error exponentially multiply_ as organization grows. One bad hire would hire two more bad hires and so on. Many would say this is the single most important reason why great companies starts to falter as they grow old - the ratio is no longer the same.

So in this proposed "solution", a misplaced trust will soon cause chain reaction. Many companies place such trust in hiring manager giving them veto power to go ahead even if all interviewers were in disagreement. I have rarely seen this work out well. All good hiring process have checks and balances - implicit infinite trust is never good idea in any system design.

<comment><USER31> I didn't see any rule that said that anyone the "trusted circle recommends" ends up being in such trust circle, so I don't see how they could be in a position to exponentially multiply.

<comment><USER30> It doesn't matter. You are putting someone in trusted circle using some heuristics. Most trust relationships eventually forms delegation chain (A trusts B, B trusts C, ...). All such chain degrades exponentially by some factor, however small it may be. This is why organizations with deep management hierarchies are so dysfunctional and inefficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> A technical interview done well is a good thing. You get to ask the candidate questions and they get to ask you questions. As the candidate, the technical interview is where I can really size up the company. How are coding standards decided? How does the development process work?

This is all interesting stuff to talk about for a candidate.

The closest thing to whiteboard coding I can think of as useful to the employer is data structure and algorithm knowledge at a toolbox level. What data structure would you use to implement a spell checker? A search for restaurants within X km?

</comment><comment><USER33> Technical interviews are awful. They are grueling and they are prone to major false signals in both directions. However, I'm not sure this is the way to go either.

Personally, I'd love for a "common form" application where you could do a timed take home coding exercise, in absence of that, why not just talk through code with an interviewee. You don't need to watch them code, if you are a good judge of technical skill, you should be able to tell just by the way that a candidate talks you through tradeoffs, refactorings, etc whether than can code or not in a way that nothing else shows.

So you really need someone to write tests for their moon rover they just made you to see that they can actually write unit specs, or would you rather talk through testing tradeoffs, when they use mocks or not, what issues they've encountered with long running test suites or flickering tests, how they test the frontend, what their thoughts are on strict versus loose TDD, etc.

Get your candidate excited and let them ramble and you'll learn far more than any contrived coding exercise, even if it isn't a whiteboard interview.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wouldn't want to be hired by a company that did this. I want to work with good people. A rigorous hiring process, uniformly applied, will tend to select good people, so it's an attractive feature of a company for me.

Although i have been lucky enough to work with some good people so far, i wouldn't trust any of them to fill a company with equally good people merely by recommendation.

</comment><comment><USER35> I worked with an intern for 6 months. He was great. Did everything I asked of him and has code still running in production.

He went back to school and then applied for a full time position, so I referred him with a glowing recommendation.

He was rejected because he was quiet and not a good cultural fit.

And that's why I avoid giving recommendations for friends. It's not worth the risk of rejection.

</comment><comment><USER36> Rather than doing this on the individual company level, which leads to all kinds of problems that many other comments here have noted, it would make sense to do this on an industry-wide level. We should have something like a "Master Engineer" credential that should require another master to vouch for you and some rigorous testing. If implemented correctly then it would become obvious that asking FizzBuzz type questions to master engineers is a waste of everyone's time. If we want to be treated like professionals, we should have professional standards. After all, when doctors go for job interviews nobody asks "what is a cell?"or to diagram the Krebs cycle on a whiteboard.

</comment><comment><USER37> Of course it's kind of hideous but it's basically what ends up happening a lot of the time, anyway.

<comment><USER38> Most of the time, it isn't what you know, but who you know. It's unfortunate.

<comment><USER28> Almost none if the time, it's who you know who also has a special insight into what really makes for a good colleague in a really difficult endeavor in an area people haven't tread before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> My preferred interviews were those with programming tests to do at home with some days before the deadline, allowed me to work like a remote dev would. On- site interviews then included a code review of the test. No white board coding, no timed programming exercise without internet, no asking things as if I could memorize all the docs of all the tools I work with.

I also liked well designed tests because the more I feel actual work skills are checked, the more confident I am that I would have well qualified colleagues to work with and learn from.

With your scenario, I fear in most places it would end up like "we hire all our friends, it's fun". Not even sure it would be legal to discriminate about people you just don't know, however qualified they may be...

</comment><comment><USER40> This seems like a situation where they came up with the wrong solution to the problem.

The great engineering leader refers people who don't make it through the technical interview. So the supposition is that "The company is missing out on great developers due to filtering in the technical interview, lets get rid of it"

When it should be "Fix the process so it doesn't filter out people while still testing for technical competence"

We just don't do whiteboards, we usually do a take home assignment/test where the candidate can make use of the tooling/environment in which they are comfortable. We feel this is also most similar to how they are going to work any ways so it is a true test of their work output.

</comment><comment><USER23> This already happens in SF. If you think a CEO or CTO of a startup is letting some technical interview failure stop him from hiring people he already knows work well, you're off your rocker.

I know one of my best bosses and mentors was hired off a terrible interview and a strong referral. Well, that's what I expect to happen.

</comment><comment><USER41> The problem with this approach is that it requires every employee to be referred in. Unfortunately, most people don't know that many people who are looking for jobs, especially people significantly older or younger than them or from different regions.

</comment><comment><USER42> Such referrals are extremely useful datapoints to refine your technical interview and reduce the false negative rate of the interview process. If your interview process is rejecting a lot of quality people, that should be a sign you need to reform it.

</comment><comment><USER43> Yeah, absolutely not. If anything, the opposite would be better: No referrals, no friends and family, no cliques.

</comment><comment><USER44> So the solution is... nepotism?

(Not technically neptosim. But close enough).

<comment><USER45> The difference is that if you're a trusted referrer and you start referring people who suck, you could easily lose that status.

<comment><USER28> I think it would be a better idea if such employees were "probationary" and if the referrer would be penalized for making mistakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is basically already the case. If you aren't experiencing it, you're a Ringo. Edit: or you work with a ton of Ringos.

</comment><comment><USER47> This idea already happens in the industry every day. The last two corporate gigs I received didn't require a technical interview at all and I absolutely refuse to apply to any company that makes me white board or submit anything coding related before they are paying me. I don't mind answering their questions though.

As one of the previous commenters stated already, there is already plenty of evidence as to whether or not somebody can code. If John Skeet applies to my company, I'm an idiot if I ask him any programming questions.

If there isn't sufficient evidence online to showcase their skills, than make them do the stupid coding examples.

In my case, I won't ever work for any company with whiteboard coding exercises. It's the first thing I ask the recruiter and than I politely decline the offer to interview and tell them exactly why. If more people do this, it will catch on.</comment>


The killing of Népszabadság, Hungary's biggest opposition paper - <AUTHOR> https://www.direkt36.hu/en/ilyen-volt-a-nepszabadsag-halala-belulrol/ <comment><USER2> The fourth estate is not just under attack, it's virtually abandoned. Only sustainably non-profit, worker-owned and subscriber-funded news can do the job, because ad-supported journalism leads to coziness with political/economic power and corporate advertisers.

<comment><USER3> In Hungary's case the threat is a massive state-funded propaganda machine pretending to be the press. How do you fight against that, especially if no one wants to pay for subscriptions?</comment></comment>


Google announces YouTube now has more than 1,000 educational channels - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/10/05/on-world-teachers-day-google-announces-youtube-now-has-more-than-1000-educational-channels/

<comment><USER2> Something relating to Youtube but not this specific article: there is always talk of a _new_ Facebook, a _new_ Twitter, but has anyone ever seen someone launch a "new Youtube"? I don't think I can ever recall any platform launching and being declared the _killer_ of Youtube, the internet just accepts Youtube as _the_ video platform and has done for a long time. With the focus on enabling even more _good_ content to be produced (eg: Educational material) it seems Youtube may just stay that way... forever.

<comment><USER3> It's a harder technical problem than people think, in terms of scaling and encoding smoothly (and playing smoothly while the rest of the video loads, which Vimeo can't seem to do). Google also has tons of fibre in addition to server infrastructure.

It's also extremely hard to break even, as even a low resolution video in bandwidth terms is many times larger than a news article. News articles often manage to squeeze in more ads than YouTube did initially as well and news on the web is fairly cut-throat and thin margin. With an article you can just examine the plain text to put a relevant advert there, with video it's much harder (although certainly possible). There is also a problem with discovery and search related to this which needs high level machine learning and thus your average "we took a regular service - taxis, maids, food - and make a phone app which uses GPS and calls it to your house for a premium" type startup guys probably don't have a clue about what would be necessary.

There was also a lot of speculation that Google has been running YouTube at a loss since acquisition. If that's true it means that their partner program was paying content producers for a long time out of Google's pocket rather than out of real viability. So a competing site going for just technology needs to understand that they are competing with a distributed stable of talent. The same goes for paying money to music producers. A startup would get legally slammed just as they were taking off (and running out of runway). Perhaps the more aggressive advertising and long commercials at the start of videos is now exploiting this subsidy-created monopoly, and perhaps in turn that will give rise to a competitor.

edits: multiple, "steaming smoothly" to "playing smoothly"

<comment><USER4> > and playing smoothly while the rest of the video loads, which Vimeo can't > seem to do

I've always had at least sporadic problems with YouTube's buffering, especially at 1080p. I have a very reliable 50Mbit connection, but often I find that YouTube can't stream fast enough.

Usually it's only with certain videos; popular videos always buffer very quickly, which makes me think it's something to do with how they tune their CDN.

<comment><USER5> You have a 50Mbps connection to your ISP. Your ISP may not have a 50Mbps * (number of subscribers) connection to the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Correction: 1000 educational channels they earn money from (i.e., part of YouTube Partner Program). I'm fairly certain there are more 1000 educational channels, far more than that.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why doesn't a cooking channel count? The definition of an educational channel can be a little broader.</comment>


'First Robotic Bar Experience in the World' Heads to the Las Vegas Strip - <AUTHOR> http://vegas.eater.com/2017/3/6/14824690/first-robotic-bar-experience-in-the-world-to-las-vegas-strip <comment><USER2> WHY ARMS? Why not just hook up a 30 hoses to bottles, add a shaker, a decent ice dispenser AND have it pour into a damn glass. Done. Use a massive screen with 100 drinks + games (sometimes you win doubles etc). Walk into mc donalds they already do this (one nozzle for 20 drinks).

<comment><USER3> Showmanship/Entertainment. The whole point of being in Vegas or on a cruise ship (prior installation), is to have a spectacular experience. An efficient, mundane, McD's dispenser isn't quite the same.

<comment><USER4> > The whole point of being in Vegas or on a cruise ship (prior installation)

My best friend works on RCCL's Quantum (or rather, its one of the ships he's worked on recently), and one of his responsibilities is maintenance of the robotic arms that perform the drink making experience [1]. He's says they're constantly down or in need of major repair while operating.

Will robotics get there? For sure. Are they there yet? Not in a cost effective manner. Still cheaper to have someone making tips behind the bar (unless, as you said, its purely showmanship).

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBF7EE2xnN4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBF7EE2xnN4)

<comment><USER5> Any idea what it costs?

<comment><USER4> I don't unfortunately, I'm just told they're constantly down for maintenance. A typical new robotic arm is ~$80k-$150k (varies widely based on implements, programming, etc); unsure of the exact model RCCL uses, but even at the low end the install cost ~$200k considering equipment costs + tech labor on board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I instantly thought of this video snippet [1] from the 80s about a robot bartender, which incidentally I only know from the Mitch Murder song "In the News." [2]

> _Finally, the last place you want to see a computer let alone a robot is in > your neighborhood bar. Yet it seems the sweep of technology has no limits. > In San Francisco this week, the world 's first robot bartender was unveiled. > The robot can talk, can take spoken orders and can mix two-hundred different > drinks. But on the first test run, when the waitress yelled out "Give me a > Bloody Mary and a beer," the robot knocked the glass off the bar onto the > floor and poured beer all over the counter. The robot's designer said there > were still some bugs to be worked out._

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdRH9Sm_4-0&t=28m12s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdRH9Sm_4-0&t=28m12s)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz7rK3Eks4s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz7rK3Eks4s)

<comment><USER5> Reminds me of this. [http://i.imgur.com/tpqNUAd.gifv](http://i.imgur.com/tpqNUAd.gifv)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I still miss the Star Trek bar in the Hilton: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Experience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Experience)

(and there was almost a giant Enterprise, too! [http://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/scifi/lifesize-replica- ente...](http://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/scifi/lifesize-replica-enterprise- built-vegas.html))

</comment><comment><USER8> A simpler version of the same idea has been implemented before, eg. the Nottinghack BarBot [https://youtu.be/20SI1o-t1F4](https://youtu.be/20SI1o-t1F4)

When they demoed it at EMF camp 2014 they had a mobile interface where you could select from a menu of cocktails and thet you waited in a queue for it to be made.

Some more details of the design can be found at [https://wiki.nottinghack.org.uk/wiki/Project:BarBot](https://wiki.nottinghack.org.uk/wiki/Project:BarBot)

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes, please put this everywhere. At least one bar in all bars.

I'm so tired of waiting to get the attention of the bar tender. It's not the fault of the bar tender. In so many places they are horribly understaffed.

<comment><USER10> There's a bar in Santa Cruz that gives you an RFID bracelet hooked up to your CC, and you pour however much you want from >30 taps on the wall. Then you pay your per-ounce tab upon exit. Only beer and wine but a cool idea. Here's a link: [http://www.pourtaproom.com/santa- cruz/](http://www.pourtaproom.com/santa-cruz/)

<comment><USER11> A local brewery (Accomplice Beer Company) just opened that does something identical, just with an RFID card that you plop on a stand above the tap rather than a bracelet. Wouldn't surprise me to learn they're using the same hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They already exist. They are called vending machines. Instead of a pushbutton these have a voice interface. Big deal. All the robot parts beyond the vending machine are just for show. If you like the show, cool. But dont expect this to reduce costs. The market has rejected vending machines in bars for good reasons.

Can this machine do the legal part of the job? Does it know when to cut someone off or call the cops? Can it spot a fake ID? Bartending as a profession isnt under any threat.

<comment><USER13> Could have one attendant supervising 2-3 vending machines in a busy venue. In supermarkets in Australia, one attendant supervises 6-8 automated checkouts and it works well.

If not vending machines, at least separate the expensive cocktail mixing from the beer and wine orders. It's painful waiting to order a round of bottled beers when the person just in front of you wants 5 random cocktails.

There are bars in Europe where each table has its own beer tap in the middle, and you are charged by volume poured. Nice gimmick.

<comment><USER12> The people who want complicated drinks also tend to like complicated coffee. It isnt about the drink. Its about getting someone to listen to your complex order and then getting ti b-tch about it when they make a mistake. Add a robot and that scheme dissapears.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> tldr from my pervious experience managing bars: neat idea but it wont fly from what I saw.

First, these robots are WAY too slow. A more efficient mechanism than those arms is sorely needed. A good bartender on a busy night can make ~100 drinks an hour (not at a bar with lots of complicated drinks). There is no way these are going to keep up.

Handling an issue with the machine means at least having someone there to troubleshoot but also likely means having a human bartender on staff anyways. If it breaks somehow you have a large decoration I guess but more likely an angry bartender with no backup.

Also the space these would take up is prohibitive to most restaurants. Bartenders will need space to move back and forth around their bar, stock items, etc. If they are sharing the bar with a robot I hope they aren't pulling from the same stock because they will both want to make cocktails from the same ingredients, which would be entertaining to watch at least. Humans can navigate that blockage more easily: "Hey I need 6 gin and tonics and two rum and cokes" vs a queue where those orders may be mixed up. Knowing how to manage that takes more than simple grouping.

I could write a lot more about

<comment><USER15> > A good bartender on a busy night can make ~100 drinks an hour

The article states they're good for 120 drinks/hour. FWIW.

<comment><USER14> I must have overlooked that. Thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This soon-to-be Vegas robot looks cool! In the meantime, if you want to try a robot server in San Francisco, my friends and I installed one in Folsom Street Foundry in SOMA. The bartender still makes the drinks but loads the Robot which brings it to the tables. If you are interested, check out the youtube video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bab7E1Da6WA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bab7E1Da6WA)

</comment><comment><USER17> How did this get by all of the union regulations in Vegas?

</comment><comment><USER18> I can't wait until Senor Frog's gets a robot that can just pour the liquor in my mouth like the real bartenders do.

<comment><USER19> Seriously though, I bet eventually we'll have a robot that can do that far more accurately than a human. Like a jet from one of those 'jumping fountains', of liquor, 20 feet away, nothing but net.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder what it takes to make this legal--I've been to corporate events with free beer and perhaps wine where there's still a bartender, presumably for legal reasons.

It seems like there may be a reason robot bars first launched at sea.

</comment><comment><USER21> Robotic arms to draw liquids from bottles? Seems excessive.

Why not just use tubes?

<comment><USER22> If you wanted efficiency, you could drink at home.

A bar tender is a combination entertainer-crowd-controller.

This a robotic/novelty emulation of a bar tender. Once the novelty wears off, they'll have to be much entertaining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Autodesk had this at their yearly conference a few years ago. It's pretty neat, but of course only one of the arms was working when I tried to get a drink!

</comment><comment> alex- Can't help but think the conveyor belt that presents the drink is there to keep you a safe distance should the controller go unstable.

<comment><USER23> There is an invisible "sensor curtain" around the robots. I accidentally put my camera too far "in" and the robots stopped instantly. As soon as the attendant saw everything was OK (and helpfully explained to me what happened) she pushed a "resume" button on the control panel and they continued right where they left off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nice, no need to do the meaningless tipping.

<comment><USER25> What optimism! Keep in mind, they'll put out tip jars at self service froyo places if it will dupe someone into think it's expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> [Star Wars cantina scene]

</comment><comment><USER27> Looks slow?

<comment><USER9> It's hard to tell because they kept having cuts and slowmo. It would be nice to see a video of a full drink being made.

Still, even a slow robot is preferred to having to wait for attention from the bartender before putting in your order. It's so frustrating to have to break away from an interesting conversation so that you could keep your eye on the bartender as he/she slowly makes their way to your area of the bar.

I'm at a bar to socialize, not to wait several minutes away from my friends trying to make eye contact with the bartender.</comment></comment>


The next big thing will start out looking like a toy - <AUTHOR> http://cdixon.org/2010/01/03/the-next-big-thing-will-start-out-looking-like-a-toy/ <comment><USER2> I may be more than a little biased, but this post _screams_ Augmented Reality.

<comment><USER3> But does anyone actually dismiss Augmented Reality as a toy? Current implementations are generally at a toy level, but isn't the concept of obvious benefit?

<comment><USER4> Why aren't GPS with POV displays considered a crude precursor of augmented reality?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another sign: the US military uses it in the field. Augmented Reality falls into this category.

</comment><comment><USER5> I remember in early 2000s when two-wheeled segway by Dean Kamen was on the verge of launch, it was secretly presented to a few ultra rich guys and was declared as even bigger than the PC. The opposite was true though in this case, this toy never took off.

<comment><USER6> I know hindsight is 20/20, but I have a hard time envisioning the thought process that led to such a declaration. The damn thing costs as much as a good used car and offers few benefits over walking or riding a bike but comes with a host of limitations. I still don't understand the appeal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The reason so many things start off as "toys", is because engineers desire technically sweet problems to solve, not user needs. What engineer doesn't love solving a problem, just because it hasn't been solved before?

<comment><USER8> Well, that and any big new thing that's _not_ a toy quickly gets crushed or acquired by an established company.

Engineers invent non-toys all the time. If those inventions are at all useful, someone will pay big bucks (either to the engineer or to a big team of competing engineers) to have it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The headline immediately made me think of this: [http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/display/...](http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/display/0-4-Google.htm)

</comment><comment><USER10> so, it's twitter!

<comment><USER11> Twitter was the next big thing a year ago. At this time time they are officially a big deal.

<comment><USER12> Yes, Twitter has passed the "next big thing" torch over to Foursquare.

<comment><USER11> That's the GoWalla ripoff? ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's not a "toy", it's a "minimum viable product".

</comment><comment><USER14> Well I mean, toys are also fun to use and if something is going to cross the chasm then it needs to be accessible enough for the mainstream and everybody likes toys.</comment>


Honeywords: Making Password-Cracking Detectable - <AUTHOR> http://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/JR13.pdf

<comment><USER2> Sweetwords, sugarwords, honeywords... O my!

I wonder how many variations of phrases were tried before arriving at these.</comment>


Purely Functional Retrogames - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/23.html

<comment><USER2> I enjoyed this article enough to wander about James' site for a bit. But I didn't appreciate his core point until I read several other articles: judge a language by the problems it solves. Or even more harshly: the problems it _has_ solved. He hammers it home in this gem, which may or may not have appeared already:

<http://prog21.dadgum.com/13.html> (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516718>)

...And I reluctantly agree with him. I love functional programming. The code is art.

But I cannot justify building a business around it: he hits many good points, but to me the killer is library availability (it's the natural extension of judging based on achievement). When I start a new project, I want to write as little code as possible. I can't do that if slightly-more-complicated-than- basic structures and patterns aren't available to me.

Sadly, this isn't even a criticism of the languages I love. It's circumstantial. But it's still killer.</comment>


Docker 0-Day Stopped Cold by SELinux - <AUTHOR> http://rhelblog.redhat.com/2017/01/13/docker-0-day-stopped-cold-by-selinux <comment><USER2> This post is incorrect. SELinux does not fully mitigate this issue. We recommend users update to 1.12.6.

I expect Red Hat to issue a retraction shortly. We notified them last night that this post was incorrect.

Source: Security at Docker.

<comment><USER3> Can you please take some time here to explain why their post was incorrect, with a brief technical explanation of why SELinux enforcement failed to stop the attack that exploits the particular vulnerability?

I realize you're busy, but it would be much more helpful than a curt statement that simply claims they are wrong.

<comment><USER4> Especially given Docker Inc.'s history of counterproductive Red Hat hostility.

<comment><USER5> This shouldn't be downvoted. Docker has been very openly history towards Red Hat in the past. To the point of openly mocking their developers at DockerCon.

<comment><USER6> Hi, I'm the founder of Docker. It's not my place to say whether comments should be downvoted or not, and I don't want to ignite teenage-drama arguments over who was mean to whom at recess - we get enough of that level of discourse on the US political scene these days.

But I think there _is_ an interesting topic to address here, that we deal with a lot at Docker.

The problem in a nutshell: if you choose to take the moral high ground and only promote your products with positive marketing (and that is our strategy at Docker - you will never see any Docker marketing content criticizing competitors), you are vulnerable to bullying and unfair criticism by competitors who don't mind hitting under the belt. Then the question is: do you allow yourself to respond and set the record straight? Or would that just legitimize the criticism by bringing more attention to it? On the other hand, not responding is also risky because it emboldens the trolls to take more and more liberties with facts and ethics. This dilemma becomes more and more pressing as you become more successful and more incumbents start considering you a possible threat to their business. Some of these incumbents have been defending their turf for decades by perfecting negative messaging. Like one competing executive once told me - "we eat startups like yours for breakfast". This situation can be bad for morale also, because your team sees their work and reputation dragged in the mud, and can interpret their employer's silence as a failure to stand up and defend them.

The most perverse variation of this problem is when trolls start _preemptively painting you as bullies_. If that narrative sticks, then you're in trouble, because any attempt to set the record straight will be interpreted as hostility. Now you have two problems: defending yourself against the bullies AND defending yourself against unfair accusations of being a bully.

The root cause of the problem, I think, is the diminishing importance of facts and critical reasoning in the tech community. We are all guilty of this: when was the last time you repeated a factoid about "X doesn't scale", "Y isn't secure", "I heard Z is really evil" without fact-checking it yourself? Be honest. Because of this collective failure to do our own thinking and researching, bullies have a huge first-mover advantage.

I see an direct parallel between the problem of corporate bullying in tech and the problem of partisan bullying in politics. And I think in both cases, there is a big unresolved problem: how do you succeed _and_ do the right thing? How do we collectively change the rules of the game to make bullying and negative communication a less attractive strategy?

I tried really hard to make this a constructive post about a topic I care about. If you interpret any of this as hostile or defensive, that is not at all the intention.

<comment><AUTHOR> When the top comment is a claim that we at Red Hat post incorrect information and that we at Red Hat are expected to delete said supposedly incorrect information without any technical explanation on why said information is incorrect, I do wonder who is the bully in your opinion.

I posted this entry and I work at Red Hat.

<comment><USER6> The post is in fact incorrect. The reason Nathan is not sharing more technical details is to protect the security of Red Hat users.

Also, if hypothetically the full details made Red Hat look bad, is it fair to assume you would be calling Nathan hostile for sharing them? In that scenario is there any course of action we could follow that would satisfy you?

<comment><USER7> >The reason Nathan is not sharing more technical details is to protect the security of Red Hat users.

Security through obscurity?

<comment><USER8> If you want to be that loose with the definition, passwords and private keys are "security through obscurity".

Giving people time to patch before releasing the details of how it can be exploited isn't a bad security practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> SELinux used to be one of those things you'd disable immediately upon installing a new RHEL/CentOS box for all the troubles it would cause. But default policies have evolved a lot, making this the wrong thing to do, for a few years now. But people still do it out of habit.

If you ignore SELinux, it won't cause issues besides the ocasional need to run "restorecon" (which one gets into the habit of doing whenever an "access denied" error happens when permissions seem otherwise correct).

But one problem still remains. SELinux is (very) complex and people (myself included) have a very hard time groking its base concepts. This limits adoption greatly, and I'm still to find a decent document that starts from the simple stuff and lets one build a mental concept of how it works before jumping into the more complicated (real-world) use cases.

<comment><USER10> _> SELinux is (very) complex and people (myself included) have a very hard time groking its base concepts._

I wonder what a clean slate OS design would look like. One that satisfied the same requirements without any concerns about backward compatibility with POSIX history.

Does anyone know an OS with vaguely this goal?

<comment><USER11> I'm probably biased, but Solaris' role-based access control system has been very successful among its particular customer base:

[https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23824_01/html/821-1456/rbac-1.ht...](https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23824_01/html/821-1456/rbac-1.html)

It wasn't necessary to throw away POSIX history or concerns either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since when is a security issue which is known to and patched by the vendor a "0-day"? Have there been any reported exploitations of this vulnerability in the wild before it was publicly disclosed with a patch made immediately available?

<comment><USER13> No, there were not, and it was disclosed to related vendors some weeks earlier. Some people seem to thing "0 day" is a l33t term for "vulnerability" it seems.

<comment><USER14> I think all they are suggesting is that running SELinux can protect you from vulnerabilities that no one knows about yet. Obviously they can't give an example of an vulnerability that is still a 0 day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> SELinux is one of our main protection against user abuse. Our project (webminal.org) provides free terminal access anyone. Thus we need protection. Behind the scenes we rely on things like SELinux/Quota/Pam.d/limits.conf/rootkits etc But SELinux has a learning curve than others, but its worth a ton.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure if the situation has changed, but I recall installing Fedora (and another distro I cannot recall) years ago, and SELinux would kill sshd when a connection was received, on a clean, out-of-the-box installation, making the host inaccessible.

These sort of super-critical bug make software go immediately into my blacklist, and it's very hard to come back from that - it basically meant that it _had_ to be disabled immediately, because it's defaults were completely broken.

<comment><USER17> I installed Fedora Server 25 a week or so ago on a small server, sshd was open (with an extremely strong random password) and fully functional at install time. SELinux has caused no issues, I actually chose to install docker in the installer at install-time and it came pre-configured to play nice with SELinux.

Firewalld on the other hand, I'm still figuring out (firewall-cmd is useful, but trying to translate iptables rules -> firewalld is proving harder than I expected)

<comment><USER18> One of the reasons I like OpenBSD. Linux has a habit of taking well established things and replacing them with incompatible things (firewalld, systemd for example).

I have enough to do, I don't need to throw away years of acquired experience every few releases. It's one thing if the replacements are clearly better, but for me they just seem to be new, different ways to do the same things.

<comment><USER19> I'd argue that (at least in recent years) OpenBSD does a lot of replacing as well, but I happen to like their direction, where the replacements are simpler rather than more complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Selinux is badly designed and it's not suprisingly people don't use it. Experts are supposed to simplify complexity. You can't design convulated and complex applications that are user hostile and break things without warning and then accuse people of laziness. Few who deploy apps take security casually and selinux is not the only way to gain security.

In a typical scenario when deploying software things can already get hairy and with selinux in the way you could end up going down multiple rabbit holes and squander hours only to discover selinux is somehow in the way disabling some functionality but not logging clearly what exactly it is disabling with proper messages. That's why most advice online is to disable it.

Given its connected to the NSA and Redhat tried its best to get it into the kernel at one time is all the more reason for anyone concerned about NSA to avoid it. Security experts like the author of Grsec also doesn't think too highly of it.

<comment><USER21> Spender/GRSec mainly doesn't like it because he has a competing RBAC which people pay for. It might be better, it might not.. but I don't have a GRSEC license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does AppArmor also block this I wonder?

<comment><USER23> AppArmor and SELinux share the same set of LSM hooks underneath, so there's comparatively little difference in capability. The big fight is over the philosophy of how they are configured (very broadly: AppArmor tends to tolerate ad hoc configuration by doing what you want instead of what you say, and SELinux like to break everything it doesn't understand perfectly).

I really wish SELinux would evolve some better configuration tools/culture, but after a decade and a half I despair of this ever happening. Every single Fedora release I leave it enabled on my personal machine thinking "THIS will be the moment where I really puzzle it out". Then I disable it a week later when I realize how much annoying work configuring rules for my rando backup and device management scripting will be, and when I see that it still lacks rules for a bunch of in-distro tools I need to use.

<comment><USER24> Last I looked, Apparmor still applied rules based on file names, not on types assigned to the underlying objects. That's a big limit on writing correct policies: every hardlink is like a firewall-spanning device.

<comment><USER25> I see it mentioned so often, but in practice... is that really an issue for you? You need to have root privs with unrestricted access (or at least hardlink creation in the directory explicitly allowed by apparmor) for that. That means the attack would have to look something like:

1\. gain access to the system (unrelated exploit) 2. elevate to root with profile which can create hardlinks at all 3. have access to a directory unrestricted in the profile 4. have local, unrestricted application which can be exploited by hardlink manipulation

This is theoretically possible on some systems. But it's a massive effort and fairly easily mitigated by having a profile for all running services which disallows hardlinks in the first place. As far as risk of service exploitation goes, this should be a fairly minimal one. (and requires targeted approach)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just a pity that SELinux is widely disabled because it ends up being a pain.

</comment><comment><USER27> Productivity is also stopped cold by SELinux :P</comment>


NesC: A Programming Language for Deeply Networked Systems - <AUTHOR> http://nescc.sourceforge.net/

<comment><USER2> I'm currently looking at tools for making distributed programming tractable. NesC is one I've been keeping an eye on, although it is targeting much more constrained systems than I am currently interested in. Here are a few more worth checking out:

Bloom (also from Berkeley, there must be something in the water)- <http://www.bloom-lang.net/>

Opis - <http://perso.eleves.bretagne.ens-cachan.fr/~dagand/opis/>

OPA (proprietary) - <https://mlstate.com/>

Peerium (proprietary, yet to be revealed) - <http://www.peerium.com/>

If anyone knows of similar efforts I'd love to hear about them.

<comment><USER3> Bloom HN discussion thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2421636>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did my bachelor thesis working with NesC/TinyOS. It is a pretty interesting platform, with an interesting take to component-based design and concurrency (i.e. shared state, with race conditions statically determined by the compiler).

I recall at the time they wer working on a 1.2 release, I guess that did not go too far.

EDIT: ah files and VCS are updated, although the home page is not :)

<comment><USER3> Latest release is 1.3.2 which came out in August 2010.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are recruiters not able to maintain a normal conversation? - <AUTHOR> I've noticed some strange behaviour in recruiters.
Somehow they aren't able to make a normal conversation. They go all casual, like they want to know more about me, but aren't able to answer sufficiently when asked a question themself.
Often I feel like talking to a mentally challenged person, who simply doesn't understand what I'm saying or someone who simply hasn't the capacity to read my whole mails.
Why is this the case?
Are they simply no real persons talking to me?
Do they think I am mentally challenged and not able to be talked to normally?
Do they do this on purpose to keep something from me?
I really would like to know why I have this feeling and how to talk to such people, because they seem to be the wall between me and a potential customer. In the end they just waste both our time. <comment><USER2> It sounds to me like your recruits have a background in sales. (All of mine do.)

Try telling them that you respect their ability to trick people (don't phrase it like that).

Pardon me, I haven't checked this link, but based on the title, I think it might contain content that would help you get in the right mindset. [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/32vsua/whats_you...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/32vsua/whats_your_favorite_he_could_sell_a_to_a_saying/)

Remember, sales people think that they have a special skill. They think that customers (victims? marks?) are not self aware. So if you demonstrate that you are aware (like a sheep making eye contact with a wolf), they might have a conversation with you.

Plan B: don't try to talk to recruiters.</comment>


Apple's unsolicited idea submission policy - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/legal/policies/ideas.html

<comment><USER2> I submitted the idea for GarageBand to Apple. I think it was through a bug report or some other generic contact Apple form. I was a senior in college at the time. I asked for a basic music loop program with an iCal interface.

I didn't really care about ownership of the idea. I just wanted the program made.

The fact that they made GarageBand was probably just a coincidence, and not based on my idea (since they already had sound editing programs like Final Cut and Soundtrack), but I was still pretty happy when they announced it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't this pretty standard?

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting stuff. Reads like Apple sees itself as a walled garden of creativity, innovation and initiative. Any external, unsolicited idea that crosses the semipermeable walls of Cupertino is swallowed into a black hole becoming Apple's property.

This gives a whole different meaning to all the recent "ideas are worthless, execution counts" talk. If you're very lucky, your idea may result in another exceptional Apple product which you can then buy in a store.

<comment><USER5> Or, _instead_ of this breathless narrative, we can acknowledge that this is a standard boilerplate legal safeguard employed by hundreds of companies, particularly those that rely on intellectual property or creative work.

But that would require you to Google ["unsolicited ideas" policy], the first two SERPs of which would tell you that the same safeguard is published at Taser, Sling, Fujifilm, eBay, Zynga, Husqvarna, Krispy Kreme, LG, McDonalds, Dickies, American Spirit Tobacco, Reynolds, Nabisco, and The Late Late Show With Craig Furguson (and all other CBS shows).

If you wanted to be creative, you could also use advanced Google-fu in the form of ["unsolicited ideas" (cisco|google|adobe|microsoft)], whereupon you'd learn that all those companies _also_ have that safeguard.

Sheesh.

<comment><USER4> Good clarification.

<comment><USER5> No.

(The parent was edited; originally, it read, ", but doesn't this just mean that the same narrative applies to all those companies too").</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hell of a record setting road rally - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/autos/story/20140702-the-best-onboard-footage-ever

<comment><USER2> This is from a while back, but very, very scary none the less. Play fullscreen for the jaw dropping experience :-)</comment>


Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/25/uber-must-turn-over-information-about-its-acquisition-of-otto-to-waymo-court-rules/ <comment><USER2> Uber's self-driving system doesn't actually have to work beyond the demo level. It's mostly to pump up the company's valuation. Uber is losing money, and unless they find another sucker within a year, they're toast. They've already had to borrow on unfavorable terms.[1]

Operating a fleet of self-driving cars may turn out to be a lousy business. Uber's business model is built around others buying the cars, maintaining them, replacing them, and doing all the hard work. All Uber does is run an app.

Running a fleet of self-driving cars is running a car rental company. The company will have to buy the cars, maintain the cars, fuel or charge the cars, and obtain parking lots for storing the cars. They also have to figure out what to do with the used cars after a few years. Car rental companies turn over their fleets in a year or two, and are big sellers of used cars.

It's more likely that car rental companies will get into self driving than that Uber will get into car rental by the trip.

[1] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding- rounds](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds)

<comment><USER3> I think the biggest cost in this business is the human component. For that all you need to do is check the price difference between renting for a day or getting taxi for a day.

Given a choice, Uber would love to be the first to have self driving cars. Once they do that their business model scales predictably with capital.

Whoever gets self driving technology right, will own all transportation and logistics - which is huge!

However, I doubt they can do it. The quality of engineering talent is subpar compared to Google. Given that they couldn't compete with R&D they probably resorted to other means.

<comment><USER4> _For that all you need to do is check the price difference between renting for a day or getting taxi for a day_

There's also the burden of convenience. A taxi is an instant, summonable affair that ends completely with the trip. A hire car has to be hired and returned to a specific location, you have to stow it during your hire period and you have to fuel it. Beyond the tangible costs of fuel, parking, etc. there's also the opportunity cost. For exmaple, people will pay for convenience of a car to pick them up and take them home when drinking, and they may only need the hire car for a couple of 10 minute bursts but you can't hire a car for less than a 24 hour period. Both of those help buoy the cost of a taxi.

I'm not suggesting you're wrong, but it's not as simple as [hire car] + [driver] = [taxi] from a cost perspective.

<comment><USER5> I don't think that's necessarily true... but I don't think anyone's cracked it yet either.

There's [https://www.car2go.com](https://www.car2go.com) which ran for a year or so in my city but has since shut down. You could leave the car within the bounds of the city.

There are also various bike schemes with a similar idea?

<comment><USER6> Car schemes exist like Zipcar. I know people who live in cities and don't own a car who use them all the time. But it's turned out to be a pretty niche business. Zipcar is the highest profile of these businesses, at least in the US, AFAIK and even they ended up bought by Avis.

I suspect that with all the VC money subsidizing Uber et al, for most people the gap between regular rentals for a day+ and just calling an Uber isn't large.

<comment><USER7> car2go and reach now are much more usable than zipcar.

* cars are littered throughout the city rather than in designated parking spots

* cars are rented by the minute rather than by the hour

* cars don't have to be returned to where you got them from

The last point is the game changer. Now, it's feasible to do things like drive to the bar, but get a taxi back, or go on a long walk and grab a car back home when you're tired out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I assume that Otto execs indemnified Uber with respect to the intellectual property, given that it was a primary value in the acquisition. If so, Uber can claw back the $680M they spent.

If not, it would be the worst IP miss since Ebay acquired Skype for $2 Billion, only to find out that they didn't own Skype's IP or have access to the source code [0].

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2009/09/18/new-lawsuit-brings- clarity...](https://techcrunch.com/2009/09/18/new-lawsuit-brings-clarity..).

<comment><USER9> >I assume that Otto execs indemnified Uber with respect to the intellectual property, given that it was a primary value in the acquisition. If so, Uber can claw back the $680M they spent.

Uber's big problem is not the $680 million. It's that if Waymo's claims are true, then Uber's self-driving car program will likely be shut down, and they will have to start all over from scratch.

And that in turn means other companies are going to beat them, likely by years, to fielding self-driving taxis, and that would be the end of Uber.

<comment><USER10> How did you figure that it would be "shut down" and what does this mean in practical terms?

<comment><USER11> The court orders them to stop using any code or designs that were touched by former Google employees, AKA all of their code and designs.

They would then have to hire a new team of people who never worked at Google, or with the former Googlers, and do a "clean room" reimplementation of a self driving vehicle, based on publically available materials and tools.

<comment><USER9> Right. And the very first step would firing Levandowski, the head of their self-driving car program.

<comment><USER12> Followed by the board somehow firing Kalanick to save Uber from himself!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This season of Silicon Valley is getting good.

<comment><USER14> I loved the episode with the new-age pushing machine for juice.

<comment><USER15> And the delivery bot followed on foot by a human.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> And the plot thickens. If Waymo is correct, and such a contract was signed, they seem to be as good as toast.

<comment><USER17> Two documents in play...

The "Uber agrees to defend Levandowski" document and the Uber-Otto due diligence documentation.

Levandowski asked for the former to be redacted, was denied. The article says it was signed just a few days after quitting his job at Google.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, sorry should've been a bit more specific I guess. I was referring to the "agree to defend Levandowski" document.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps this is standard practice, in the valley, to make the company that acquired your company defend you in the event that the acquisition resulted in a lawsuit, but this revelation just adds another red flag to the already long list of red flags that Uber ignored when acquiring Otto. IMO, Uber clearly knew what he did, either through disclosure or due diligence, and disregarded it. Considering their company culture of playing fast and loose with the rules until you get caught this is not surprising.

>"Waymo has claimed that Levandowski signed an agreement with Uber's lawyers just a few days after quitting his job at Google, requiring Uber to defend him if the company's acquisition of Otto resulted in a lawsuit."

>"Mr. Levandowski argues that he is entitled to relief under the Fifth Amendment because production of the unredacted privilege log could potentially incriminate him. We are not persuaded that the district court erred in its ruling requiring defendants to produce an unredacted privilege log," the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled."

>"The order also opens the door for Waymo to request a copy of the due diligence report that Uber commissioned while it was in the process of acquiring Otto. Waymo has claimed that the due diligence report could contain evidence that Uber knew Otto was using stolen technology"

<comment><USER19> You are missing the key point: that agreement was not signed when Otto was acquired by Uber, it was signed days after Levandowski left Google, before there should have been any discussions with Uber regarding the acquisition of a startup that didn't exist yet. That is really bad optics.

<comment><USER20> Are there any legitimate reasons why Uber would sign this agreement?

Why would a company sign an agreement with the founder of a startup about the acquisition of said startup before it even exists?

This lends credence to Google/Waymo's argument that Uber and Levandowski where scheming from the get-go. Bad optics, indeed.

<comment><USER9> Waymo claims it has evidence that Levandowski and Urber were talking for months before he left Waymo.

In addition there is the fact the he secretly started a self-driving car company at least a year before. The whole thing looks like he and Uber planned the whole scheme beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Question: how public are these hearings? Is there a place we could get transcripts of them? (I remember previous days had snippets of transcripts (at the very least))

<comment><USER19> A lot of the motions are posted here: [https://www.courttrax.com/trending- cases/#317cv00939](https://www.courttrax.com/trending-cases/#317cv00939)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's a link to the actual order, from ars, which is where the cool old school journalists work that still link to sources: [https://arstechnica.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/04/CAFC.Waym...](https://arstechnica.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/04/CAFC.Waymo_.Uber_.order_.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm really curious how Alphabet even suspects that Levandowski signed this doc days after he quit. Anonymous/confidential tip?

<comment><USER17> They didn't know. Levandowski's lawyer outed its existence in a hearing, trying to use it as some basis for redacting or witholding other documents.

 _" Ramsey pointed to a joint defense agreement between Levandowski and various law firms that meant that nothing should be revealed."_

I assume it was dated.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/judge-accuses- ub...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/judge-accuses-uber-and- levandowski-of-obfuscation-in-waymo-case/)

Perhaps a move he regrets?

Edit: That arstechnica article has much more info on how this played out than the main linked article for this thread.

<comment><USER23> Wow, misstep after misstep. This is really turning out very poorly for Uber. All because of a bunch of accidental events.

<comment><USER24> In a more cynical view it could be because he is actually super guilty and many of these "missteps" are because the alternatives are even worse

<comment><USER9> Not just he but also Uber.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't get Levandowski's 5th amendment claim on the privilege log. Doesn't the 5th amendment only stop the individual from incriminating himself?

How can he argue that other people (or an entire company in this case) are not allowed to incriminate him?

Has anyone successfully claimed 5th amendment and forced other people/entities not to incriminate him/her?

<comment><USER26> 'The statement at issue need not directly implicate the witness as long as it "furnish[es] a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute the claimant for a...crime." Hoffman v. United States , 341 U.S. 479, 486-87 (1951).'

[http://corporate.findlaw.com/law-library/taking-the-fifth- am...](http://corporate.findlaw.com/law-library/taking-the-fifth-amendment-in- front-of-the-federal-grand-jury-in.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's high time for mods to launch ubernews, they are in the spotlight every single day. 71 submissions last week [0].

0: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=uber&sort=byDate&dateRange=pas...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=uber&sort=byDate&dateRange=pastWeek&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

<comment><USER28> Were you on Slashdot when SCO was ongoing? If not, this is what a corporate titan proxy war looks like in the news cycle.

And it's objectively defensible. The outcome of this lawsuit will shape what an incredibly important future technology looks like and who controls it.

<comment><USER29> SCO?

<comment><USER30> You're in for a treat.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO/Linux_controversies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO/Linux_controversies)

<comment><USER31> I remember showing up to their local meeting with some other Linux guys in the area and politely calling bullshit on their lawsuit. It was kind of fun, although I'm not normally one to court controversy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Where's the district attorney? If someone is claiming the 5th because he might be incriminated that seems like pretty strong probable cause for a criminal investigation.

<comment><USER33> There's nothing wrong or shady about claiming the 5th. It's an important legal protection. Why would you seek to diminish or undermine something that might one day protect you?

<comment><USER34> There's a pretty big difference between your fifth amendment rights in civil cases vs. criminal cases. California extends more protections than many states in civil cases, but in many places it can absolutely be used against you in adverse inferences..

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/2015/08/30/what-happens-if-you-take-the-fifth-in-a-civil-case- an-important-california-law-correction/?tid=a_inl)</comment></comment></comment>


1 in 5 undergrads is constantly stressed - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23693229/

<comment><USER2> I agree with this article. I find that it's hard to manage college courses, a part-time (~10hrs/wk) job, stay active (weight lifting), a social life, and staying up to date with tech and hacking on my own side projects. It's ridiculously hard to stay in a good mental state of mind while trying to balance it all let alone judge whether you have too much on your plate.

And to be completely honest it is tempting and helpful to sometimes turn to drugs. I find myself taking sleeping pills because I can't sleep at night. Adderoll to stay focused and be productive and maryjane to relax on my freetime. I know this all can be fixed with proper lifestyle... but it's nearly impossible to dig out of said hole...

</comment><comment><USER3> ... and the other 4 were too busy to answer.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't get it.

My time in college was the easiest time in my life. I carried a full course load, did extra activites (math club, sports, fraternity), and worked part time (full time during breaks). We were independent for the first time, partied, made friends for life, ran a small business, oh, and even went to class. I graduated, got a job, and paid my bills.

Stressed in college? Wait until you have to be at work on time every day, put up with who knows what at work, pay your bills, pay your mortgage, get along with your spouse, spend time with your kids, take care of your health, and smile the whole time. Did I mention going to work and paying your bills? Oh yea.

I'd like to have empathy for those with hardships, but this just doesn't compute for me. Why not just do what you're supposed to do in college: grow up and get on with it.

<comment><USER4> Stress is really a function of whether you care about the outcome, not how much work it is. In my first full-time job, I didn't give a damn about whether the company failed or succeeded since I was gone in a year anyway, and it was one of the least stressful periods of my life. When I first went to college, I figured I'd coast and forget about grades, and had a blast. When I started flunking out and I realized I didn't want to throw away 4 years without a degree, it got stressful. When it became virtually certain that I'd flunk out, my stress level just evaporated, despite the fact that I was working harder than ever (I ended up getting that degree after all). Then my second full-time job was very stressful because I actually cared how the company did and yet big factors in the outcome were outside of my control.</comment></comment>


Top Useful .htaccess rewrites, Mod_Rewrite Tricks and Tips - <AUTHOR> http://techwawwe.posterous.com/16177377

<comment><USER2> Seems like a copy of [http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/mod_rewrite-tips-and- trick...](http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/mod_rewrite-tips-and-tricks.html)

but with no attrition.

<comment><USER3> Attribution.

In fact, being that it doesn't have the attribution, I'd say it did suffer from attrition.

But that's enough of me bein' a grammar nerd.

<comment><USER2> thanks, had a typo and it got corrected to that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "This rewrites all files for /zap/j/anything-anynumber.js to /zap/j/anything.js and /zap/c/anything-anynumber.css to /zap/c/anything.css"

Why post a file called "foo-12930.css" and show it to browsers at "foo.css"? The opposite is better - keep updating foo.css (and use version control), but show it to users as "foo.css?some-timestamp". This is what Rails does. If your server is configured to tell browsers to cache CSS files for a year, they will request the file once, then continue to use the cached version until you update the file. Then they'll see that it has a new timestamp and get the new version.

This post (and the previous one) show how to do this in PHP: [http://sleeplessgeek.blogspot.com/2010/03/cache-busting- in-p...](http://sleeplessgeek.blogspot.com/2010/03/cache-busting-in-php- part-2.html)

<comment><USER5> The opposite is happening here. The user (browser) requests "foo-123.css" and is served "foo.css."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Note you can make the www redirect generic across virtual hosts. (And, R=301 or not depending on the circumstance.)

        # non-www -> www"
        RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\."
        RewriteRule .            http://www.%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [R,L]"</comment>


Netflix to expand to Germany, France and Switzerland - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27496055 <comment><USER2> I find it so ridiculous that an internet company has to "expand" to another country.

Why can't it just be a matter of removing the geoip checks from your servers?

(I know, I know, still... the internet was not meant to be this way.)

<comment><USER3> If Netflix just started taking money from German customers while providing them with a terrible service, we would be angry at that.

It makes sense that they might have to get local servers, or at least test the waters before opening the floodgates.

<comment><USER2> > If Netflix just started taking money from German customers while providing > them with a terrible service, we would be angry at that.

That's not the limiting reactant. The actual issue with region lockout is copyright bullshit.

<comment><USER4> This. The fact that most people seem this ignorant to practical law issues is a major part of why the overall situation (patents, Hollywood, etc) is as shitty as it is, methinks. Uneducated flocks are easier to steer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "More likely, we'll figure out some stuff's working, some stuff's not; we'll > adjust the formula."

I absolutely love this mindset from Netflix. Every conf talk, article I hear from them they talk about stuff that didn't work, that did work for a while but didn't scale. Then show what worked better.

</comment><comment><USER6> _Netflix also must contend with the fact that French audiovisual laws require local broadcasters to invest significant sums in domestic content. However, Les Echos newspaper has suggested Netflix might get around this by basing the service in Luxembourg._

Actually Netflix is already based in Luxembourg for its European activities and there have been news that they're going to move to Netherlands: [http://www.wort.lu/en/business/move-to-the-netherlands- netfl...](http://www.wort.lu/en/business/move-to-the-netherlands-netflix-to- give-up-luxembourg-hq-537b643ab9b3988708027f67)

<comment><USER7> Aren't there equivalent laws in Canada (minimum canadian content)? Netflix is available in Canada.

<comment><USER8> The CRTC has basically washed their hands any internet content. They worry about the internet itself, but not the actual stuff you put on it the way they worry about radio/cable/broadcast content. It's naive and inconsistent but as a Netflix fan I can't really complain about it.

To their credit, Netflix does license a bunch of Canadian content from the CBC and Global TV, which shows a good-faith attempt to provide Canadian content. I doubt they pay much for it though, and I doubt their ratio matches the CRTC's requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, it remains legal to download music and movies in Switzerland (PirateBay & Co), so there's that.

<comment><USER10> In Switzerland, you can legally download but not upload, so bittorrent should not be considered safe.

The interesting loophole for the bittorrent users is the fact that a private company cannot arvest the ip ( [http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2010/09/switzerland-gathe...](http://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2010/09/switzerland-gathering-ip-addresses-from-bittorrent-sites- illegal/) ) addresses from trackers, thus making quite hard the prosecution. (And from past cases, it looks like they will prosecute only people that are doing it for money, not for personal use).

Interesting move from netflix, but I'm quite curious how they will handle the localization of the content. Will they provide italian and french content too in Switzerland? Or like everybody else, they will ignore us linguistic minorities?

<comment><USER11> How hard can it be to disable upload in bittorrent clients and be a bad but considerably more legal torrent citizen?

<comment><USER10> not hard at all obviously.

Anyway, given the current legal situation in Switzerland, uploading data with bittorrent while downloading some music/film is basically a no risk activity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The title is incomplete/misleading - six European countries, not just 3:

      Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg

<comment><USER13> A policy on maximum title length, most likely.

On a side note, Belgium has a higher population than Austria, and Austria a higher population than Switzerland, so the only reason for specifically mentioning Switzerland in the title seems to be that it has a nice ring to it :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a German and want to say there is no real competition here. As far as I'm concerned we are waiting desperately for a reasonable streaming service! Even watching in English would not be a problem as long as we could have Netflix! There are people here paying VPN and Netflix, so money should not be an issue.

<comment><USER15> Eh? There's at least two large video-on-demand streaming services by large companies like Vivendi and Amazon in Germany. Maybe you don't like what they offer (I don't), but saying there's no competition is far-fetched.

<comment><USER14> Please don't take it too literal.

<comment><USER16> What? This is hacker news!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > while French TV has a lot of subtitling - in Germany foreign language movies > and TV shows are generally voiced over

Can anyone explain why this is? I hate watching dubbed video, especially when it's live action.

<comment><USER18> Dutch people prefer subtitles. German, Italian, Spanish and French people prefer dubbing. It's weird and I don't know why it is. Things just evolved to be like that.

<comment><USER19> Where do you get this impression? I've lived in France my whole life and most people I know try to avoid subtitles as much as possible. Most of the foreign TV contents are dubbed anyway, except on a few channels (Arte).

This may be less true for the new generation accustomed to watching subtitled TV shows on the internet, instead of waiting for a few years to get them in French on TV.

<comment><USER20> This.

I grew up in Belgium, and there were two versions of films on - V.O. (Version Originale) which had two sets of subtitles (Flemish and French) and V.F. (Version Francaise).

The cinema usually had far more Flemish speaking people in the VO screenings than French speaking, so I assume they went to the VF ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wonder how that will work out for them. Both Deutsche Telekom and Kabel Deutschland provide their own video on demand services, and together they cover pretty much 99% of all last mile infrastructure.

This is the one thing where they are ahead even of the US competition, which is still deciding if they should "do this content thing" and keeping the network deadlocked and at standstill in the meantime (as the wise aristocrats decide).

</comment><comment><USER22> With a scant choice of movies on Netflix UK (most of which are either old or at the bottom of the box-office leaderboard) doubt they'll gain any significant traction in EU. I'd rather have them spend extra cash to acquire licences for streaming popular movies and TV shows in EU.

</comment><comment><USER23> Netflix launched in Sweden about 1.5 years ago. Last week the results of a poll of the public was presented: About 1 million Swedes have access to Netflix streaming at their home. This is out of a population of about 9 million.</comment>


Venture's New Grail - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0216/046_print.html

<comment><USER2> Very interesting article. I think this is where the VC business is heading. Startups will either bootstrap or take very little capital and then receive larger investments when they have matured to profitability.</comment>


Stephen Hawking leaves behind 'breathtaking' final multiverse theory - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/03/18/stephen-hawking-leaves-behind-breathtaking-final-multiverse/ <comment><USER2> No he did not. The original paper is at

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.07702](https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.07702)

This paper was not widely noticed back when it was written in July (both inside and outside the theoretical physics community) and still has not been accepted in a journal.

In fact, it is rather unfortunate but most of what Stephen Hawking did in his latter years has been highly speculative; perhaps food for thought for other experts, but not worth reporting about in the mainstream media since it is (in my opinion) very likely to be wrong.

I apologize for not debunking this paper with more detail but a scientist can spend a lifetime doing so... However I can make one falsifiable prediction (like a true physicist): the serious news media will not report on this.</comment>