FOSS and Pro-Privacy Reddit Alternative Raddit-App - <AUTHOR> Since Reddit has now abandoned its open source mission statement, this is a good time to contribute to truly free and open source projects that aren't controlled by profit-driven corporations. MediaGoblin is an impressive decentralized alternative to YouTube, Mastodon improves on Twitter and Diaspora on Facebook. Similarly, Raddit-app aims to be a libre Reddit alternative:
https://gitlab.com/edgyemma/raddit-app
Everyone that spent time and energy contributing to Reddit's code had the rug pulled out from under them when the company announced it was closing its source code going forward. An "open source" license alone is no guarantee that the code will always be public, which is why it's important to support fully FOSS projects if you're going to volunteer your labor to create a better Internet.
Started as a response to Reddit's warrant canary being killed, Raddit-app was coded from scratch in PHP and is so pro-privacy that it doesn't require javascript to work.
Raddit-app's so-far only implementation https://raddit.me is run by direct democracy, with all decisions being made by the community that uses the site. It also has the most libre Privacy Policy out there. IP addresses are only held for 7 days before being purged from the system, and no other identifying information is gathered. No tracking, no ads, no profit incentives, and it even includes features missing from reddit such as integrated themes, night mode and a Tor hidden service. The code is so lightweight it costs only $5 a month to run the site (on a VPS), when it would cost 20 times more to run a site of equal size using Reddit's memory-intensive mess of a codebase. <comment><USER2> As far as the system goes it looks nice enough. Seems like an adequate enough replacement for Reddit on a technical or interface level.

However, it's the content that matters a million times more. And to be honest...

I think you've fallen into the trap many Reddit alternatives have. Namely, your site seems heavily focused on politics to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. Every section there is related to the alt-right, Nazis, or US politics at the expense of more varied discussion topics.

As a result, people who don't care about politics won't join, since there's pretty much nothing for them there. Nor will those who tend towards the centre or right of the political spectrum, since it seems to be heavily tilted towards a left wing audience.

Focus a bit more on finding topics to discuss in a wider variety of areas, or attracting people who don't want to talk about Trump and America all the time.

That's my thoughts on the site anyway.

<comment><USER3> I really hope someone will host a non-political instance, because I really like the implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm up for it. More so if you could round up a list of other FOSS alternatives.

<comment><USER4> Oh, just realised how politicised Raddit is. That's less interesting now.

<comment><USER3> Maybe raddit.me, but the app is still very interesting.

Raddit-app is written in Symfony and licensed under the zlib license (awesome choice!): [https://gitlab.com/edgyemma/raddit- app](https://gitlab.com/edgyemma/raddit-app)

Self-hosting for some projects might be a good idea, especially if you don't want to be associated with raddit.me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why can't Raddit abandon its open source mission statement ?

<comment><USER3> It definitely could. I heard that reddit is very hard to self-host though and that development always wasn't very open. Maybe raddit is better in those regards ;)</comment></comment>


Ash HN: What software can I write for $39 per month? - <AUTHOR> Back Story: I am a developer and I would to build a Saas. I want to build something simple that small and medium size businesses would pay $39 per month for.
I was wondering if this tread can be used as a brainstorming thread...
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> The first thing about the value to the user and then build the technology to scale. Technology supports an existing business, not the other way around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agreed</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How secure are private Git repositories? - <AUTHOR> Would you use them to version sensitive data?
Would Gitlab/Github have access to the underlying content/history?
I wouldn't use them to store passwords or banking-related information, though how about medical/income/taxation documents or information? <comment><USER2> > Would you use them to version sensitive data?

If you are using a self-hosted version of Github or preferably GitLab then yes. However, If you're on GitHub or GitLab's cloud version then it's not secure and you have zero control, even if its private.

> Would Gitlab/Github have access to the underlying content/history?

Who knows. But the first answer tells you that you will have more control in a self-hosted environment over a cloud based version and I wouldn't risk putting sensitive data there unless I have complete control with a self-hosted open- source version (GitLab).

> ...though how about medical/income/taxation documents or information?

Well that's very sensitive data equivalent to bank-level information, which can be used as a reason for others to determine your job, insurance or loan choices. Thus, should be treated as sensitive too.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right on the sensitivity of such data... better to go with a self- hosted gitlab.

<comment><USER3> But if you fail to update it, you leave unpatched security holes. In practice, using a cloud version could be better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have often wondered this myself. Considering if github was ever compromised, could an attacker modify your source code without your knowledge. Seems like a holy grail of attacks.

What would be interesting if there was some at-rest encryption and maybe some audit functionality.

<comment><USER5> You would notice, the hash of the commit would change and you would get an error message in Git. If this is a vector attack your are worried about, you should sign Git tags with your PGP key and then you would notice any change in the history, each commit depends on its ancestors so signing a tag ensure no older commit can be changed too.

<comment><USER6> Hashes, while sometimes clumsy[0], are an advantage in this instance over, say, SVN or CVS (which use monotonicly increasing commit IDs).

[0]: Every time I want to find a commit's parent(s) in Git, I have to look up the command (I don't do it often), whereas in SVN I could just subtract one.</comment></comment></comment>


Verizon throttled fire department's "unlimited" data during wildfire - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttled-fire-departments-unlimited-data-during-calif-wildfire/ <comment><USER3> This seems like the classic case of people relying on intuition instead of the documented SLA. Verizon's plan should be assumed to be a 200Kbps plan that can occasionally burst to 50Mbps. But someone tried it out, and mentally built the model that it was an always-50Mbps plan. Then they were proven wrong during a crisis.

I very much agree with other posters that "unlimited" is a very misleading term. If the service runs at 200Kbps, then that's something like 65GB/month, which is not an infinite amount of data. If Verizon sold two "unlimited" plans, one that could be throttled and one that couldn't be, it would be very clear to the customer why the 16TB/month (50Mbps * 1 month) plan was a lot more expensive than the 65GB/month (200Kbps * 1 month) plan. But they hide it all in the fine print, so anyone that doesn't carefully read the fine print and extensively test the service doesn't actually know what they're getting. This is unfortunate. I don't think it's a net neutrality issue (it's not like they were throttled because the traffic was going to Amazon instead of Google), but rather a truth-in-advertising issue.

<comment><USER4> And yet I am pretty sure that in Germany at least, that plan would not be allowed to be called "Unlimited", no matter how fine the fine print ends up being.

I miss those consumer protections a lot since I moved to the US. It sometimes may seem to get a little bit silly (I'm not totally sure, but I think you are not even allowed to say e.g. "the best pizza" in advertising, because how would you prove that claim), but I easily prefer a little silliness over the deliberately misleading claims here.

<comment><USER5> Yep, if you use the word unlimited, and that's not what you're actually providing, you're a liar. Pure and simple.

If this is common practice, then these companies are all a bunch of liars.

As opposed to other places in the world, truth in advertising is dead in the US - and also Australia, for that matter.

Try using the word "free" in Norway if you're not prepared to offer that for free with _zero_ strings attached, and see how far you get before feeling the weight of the law. (And "zero strings" here means exactly that in the most literal sense).

<comment><USER6> > and also Australia, for that matter.

what? Australia has some of the strongest consumer protection laws - <USER2> I actually feel bad for the corporations...

There is a whole strict regulatory system for determining facts vs mere puff.

<comment><USER5> I studied marketing law in Norway as part of marketing science before switching back to tech and then moving down under; Australian marketing law is very very relaxed compared to Norway.

<comment><USER6> Really can you give examples? To give recent general advertising law examples about how strict the standards bureau is, in Australia it's illegal to show a woman doing most of the housework, or a man being a bad father.

<comment><USER5> Any ad or promotion that features the word "free".

Edit: actual example, [https://coleslittleshop.com.au](https://coleslittleshop.com.au)

They are not free. You have to spend $30 to get one. The word _free_ is perverted.

This would be illegal in Norway: [https://www.forbrukertilsynet.no/lov-og- rett/veiledninger-og...](https://www.forbrukertilsynet.no/lov-og- rett/veiledninger-og-retningslinjer/forbrukerombudets-veiledning- prismarkedsforing#chapter-5-3)

<comment><USER7> > 5.3 Gratispåstander

> "Gratis", "vederlagsfritt", "uten betaling" og lignende uttrykk må ikke > benyttes i markedsføringen dersom gratisytelsen er betinget av kjøp av andre > ytelser for å oppnå gratisytelsen.

translates more or less directly (using Google translate and then adjusting slightly based on my 15+ years of experience with talking and writing mostly Norwegian) to

5.3 "Free" Claims

"Free", "Free of charge," "Unpaid," and similar terms, may not be used in the promotion if the free good or service is conditional upon purchase of other benefits to achieve the free good or service.

<comment><USER5> That's pretty spot on; thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > While fire department personnel thought they were already paying for "truly" > unlimited data, Verizon said they weren't.

Despite the overarching issues here, what culpability is there when these public safety services who build reliance on these private companies don't do due diligence on what they use? We can all pull on heartstrings, say this customer is special after the fact, bemoan that both Verizon and the fire department have red tape making it a slower-than-necessary process, etc.

As a customer, I empathize with the fire department because it isn't always clear to us what unlimited is. But in this environment, while Verizon has fault here as does the general system, these public services need to do a bit more to ensure they are getting what they expect. Net neutrality isn't going to fix the "unlimited" wording issues or throttling as much as we'd like it to. That needs fixing sure, but in the meantime these public services need to get together and share info/plans/etc.

To the bigger problem...well, that's a different deal and not specific to this anecdote.

<comment><USER9> Rather than complain that customers don't read the fine print, how about removing throttling from the fine print and have companies advertise what they are selling?

If they are selling an "unlimited" plan, then it should be unlimited (i.e. without throttling of any kind)

If they are selling a "20GB then throttled to 128kbs speeds" plan, then call it a "20GB plus" plan so everyone knows what they are buying.

<comment><USER10> When you go to the page, you see three options: [https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/unlimited](https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/unlimited)

"Unlimited 4G LTE Data" for $40

"Unlimited 4G LTE Data (22 GB)" for $50

"Unlimited 4G LTE Data (75 GB)" for $60

There is a little (i) symbol next to each one, with a mouse over box that explains the throttling. The throttling is also explained if you click the link "important plan info."

The first option could be clearer with a parenthetical, but with the three right next to each other alongside the prices it's pretty clear what you're buying.

<comment><USER11> I disagree that it's clear. Words have meanings, and

> By "unlimited", we really meant "limited".

shouldn't be a valid defense for misleading consumers. The plan would be more accurately described as "15GB 4G LTE Data". If the limits were stated more prominently, the fire departments could have avoided confusion and worked with Verizon or a competitor to get on a plan that wouldn't stop working at the worst possible times. Verizon could have also avoided some bad press by just waiving the fees and sorting things out later instead of demanding extra money during an emergency.

<comment><USER10> Your definition isn't accurate. That suggests that you don't get 4G speeds after 15GB, which isn't the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how many people read the article to the end, let alone the addendum filed by SCCFD [1].

This has nothing to do with the definition of "unlimited" or the fine print for it. OES 5262 (that's a CalOES resource) had sufficient bandwidth for fire response needs up until the Mendocino Complex incident, when their connection was strangled so badly that it wasn't just slow, it was unusable, during a major state disaster. This put a lot of lives directly at risk.

Their brief is arguing in support of the lawsuit against the FCC that's attempting to overturn the repeal of net neutrality. They argue that in a deregulated environment, providers like Verizon can and will use disasters to strong-arm responding agencies -- state and local governments -- into paying higher fees. This is well supported by Verizon's emails, which flatly refused to assist SCCFD until they ponied up the extra money for a plan upgrade that they didn't need until the Mendocino fire.

The article also adds that the FCC's removal of net neutrality removed the ability for SCCFD to complain to the FCC about this behavior.

A few people are saying that maybe the fire department should have more carefully reviewed their plan information, or they should have had more qualified people in IT. Well, maybe. I looked up Eric Prosser's LinkedIn profile, and he's spent his whole career in management. Maybe there was a technical issue, or maybe it was just an oversight.

But ultimately it's hard for agencies to attract strong technical talent, especially in Silicon Valley, where so much of that talent is working on the much more interesting problems of squeezing more money out of advertising or debt collections. If you want your first responder agencies to have working technology, get involved. Somewhere in each of those agencies is a human being who may not think about things like bandwidth throttling as carefully as HN's nerds.

[1]: [https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/fire- depa...](https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/fire-department- net-neutrality.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is outrageous, but it's outrageous because it is legal to describe something as unlimited that is in fact no such thing.

The reasonable thing here would be to simply require companies to be honest and state the actual bandwidth they provide.

This issue seems orthogonal to net neutrality; the real problem is in allowing companies to mislead.

<comment><USER14> Is the data capped? When they exceed their data cap, does the service shut off?

<comment><USER15> If you went to an unlimited buffet and found out that you could only get one 'full' plate, then every other plate could only have one small piece of food and only once every hour, you'd be yelling about false advertising.

If we want truth in advertising, then the banners would say

"Unlimited 200Kbps Internet, capable of 25GB of 4G burst speed"

Which is much different than

"Unlimited 4G Internet", then a bunch of small text about the limits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> " _Critical emergency services fix now! Huge problem!_ wait what? It costs $60? Well.... Let me see..."

It never ceases to amaze me how worked up people can get over an outage, yet still balk at tiny costs. This puts me in the unenviable position of defending Verizon here. People are painting this as Verizon being usurious, and not as a lack of proper capacity planning on the fire departments part. What is the actual problem here?

\- Verizon wasn't price gouging or changing the terms during a time of emergency.

\- The emergency services certainly are important, which is precisely why they should be buying the appropriate services for their needs. Rather than blaming Verizon for not giving them a free ride.

Verizon has stated terms on their service levels, and what can be expected. They offered to change the service level instantly for the published price. No penalties or special fees etc... While their "Unlimited" verbiage may be misleading to the uninformed, any professional ops person would understand and expect this.

Consumer level services built on light usage are a constant thorn in the side of operations people everywhere. It creates extremely flawed expectations on the business side for what reliable/high usage systems cost. I guarantee there was someone in the chain who wanted proper planning on this wireless data service, and was shut down with "whatever, I don't care about all your tech babble just get the $40 plan it works fine for [other use case]." Now rather than take responsibility for the operational failure, the organization blames a vendor for not providing free additional services.

<comment><USER17> "Unlimited" is not just misleading. It is an outright lie. It is completely false and Verizon knows it is false but continues to call it that because they know it will fool some of their customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Look at the bright side, at least Verizon doesn't run the water utility. The water companies weren't throttling down water asking for price gouging.

ISPs like Verizon just run the network utility, that only the ISPs don't think is a utility.

The reason ISPs fought so hard to end net neutrality, remove privacy protections and remove them from FCC oversight was to remove ISPs and the network utility from Title II / common carrier protections which make them a utility.

ISPs know they are a utility but only want the benefits [1] not the service and legal requirements of being a privileged utility and local monopoly.

> _Broadband providers have spent years lobbying against utility-style > regulations that protect consumers from high prices and bad service._

> _But now, broadband lobby groups are arguing that Internet service is > similar to utilities such as electricity, gas distribution, roads, and water > and sewer networks. In the providers ' view, the essential nature of > broadband doesn't require more regulation to protect consumers. Instead, > they argue that broadband's utility-like status is reason for the government > to give ISPs more money._

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/isps-want-to- be-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/isps-want-to-be-utilities- but-only-to-get-more-money-from-the-government/)

<comment><USER19> Water utilities also generally do not offer "unlimited water" plans (unless you're coke/nestle I guess)

<comment><USER18> > _Water utilities also generally do not offer "unlimited water" plans (unless > you're coke/nestle I guess)_

True, it is a physical resource as well but they aren't throttling water and they meter it, so if you use less you don't have to pay for that unused water, but if you use more or an almost unlimited need, you pay for that usage.

ISPs get data overage charges after data caps but I don't get money back when I don't use up all my plan. ISPs have ISP-friendly metering now with data caps and throttling, I pay if I go over but I don't get money back if I use less. Or they offer unlimited plans that are throttled earlier than people want to oversell their capacity.

Water isn't throttled and limited if you are paying but it isn't truly unlimited, neither is bandwidth/capacity, but bandwidth/capacity is more unlimited than water is as expansion is easier. All cable ISPs have to do is take more of the line dedicated to TV channels and use them for data and expand capacity, but they are choosing to nickel and dime and keep capacity low to keep data caps, throttling, overselling capacity, tax dollars and invest as little as possible in those areas rather than offer innovative jumps in bandwidth required for progress.

<comment><USER20> I doubt it's trivial to add more capacity to ISPs. Also in places like California where there are water shortages some municipalities ARE have rates that increase dramatically as your usage goes up.

<comment><USER18> > _I doubt it 's trivial to add more capacity to ISPs._

Running new lines takes time sure, but it is very easy to dedicate more of the line to data over tv channels which take immense data.

With DOCSIS 3.1 they can multiplex but more should be used for data over television and capacity is easily added.

Hard wired broadband is just milking it until 5G and by the time we get to 6G will be dead like phone lines so wirelessly adding capacity will be easier.

My guess is ISPs are just not wasting time running lines, especially the ones that will push people to 5G and future specs when those are out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _County Fire believes it is likely that Verizon will continue to use the exigent nature of public safety emergencies and catastrophic events to coerce public agencies into higher-cost plans, ultimately paying significantly more for mission-critical service_

So I guess they want to use net neutrality to force cellular carriers to offer enterprise-grade service at consumer prices. That's what everyone wants, of course, but it's rare to see someone actually say it.

<comment><USER22> > "Our understanding from Eric Prosser, our former Information Technology > Officer, was that he had received approval from Verizon that public safety > should never be gated down because of our critical infrastructure need for > these devices."

Perhaps the ITO was wrong, but it seems they had reason to believe they would get this level of service per an agreement with Verizon (rather than forcing them as you say), and it was Verizon who messed up their end of the deal.

<comment><USER23> I made a comment about a relevant experience we had at my current employer.[1] In short, we switched from a multi-device plan with a shared 60 GB cap to a multi-device plan with an 'unlimited' data cap, our IT department was genuinely surprised when devices were throttling after 22 GB per device. Also, Verizon wanted so much money to increase a device's cap, it was cheaper to purchase additional hotspots, pay to add them to the plan, and cannibalize the SIMs when current devices start throttling.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17814698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17814698)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Verizon's billing practices aside, I'm surprised they're not using FirstNet (firstnet.gov / firstnet.com), since I thought the whole point of that project is to create a cellular network specifically for emergency services.

It also looks like FirstNet has a _slightly_ more generous data overage policy for their "unlimited" plan:

> "Unlimited Plan may not exceed 22GB a month for three consecutive months; > AT&T reserves the right to require Customer to move to a FirstNet > Mobile—Pooled Plan if usage exceeds this limitation."

Does anybody know how widely FirstNet has actually been adopted?

<comment><USER25> FirstNet's spectrum has yet to be deployed significantly, and in that part of California AT&T lags for coverage. Band 14 (the spectrum FirstNet uses) devices are few and far between, let alone a cellular data gateway that supports that band. It took years for band 12 to be available on cellular data gateways, I think band 71 will likely make an appearance before band 14 gets hardware support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think the biggest issue that's being brought to light here is how "unlimited" plans are pretty much never "unlimited".

Despite the fine print, how is this not false advertising? Can I name a product anything I want and bury whatever conditions in the fine print?

<comment><USER27> It is false advertising, simple as that. Nobody is going to do anything about it though, because our politicians are bought. Best thing you can do is boycott and hope they will change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> When a Verizon facility catches fire, may the water facility throttle the water supply, demanding upgrades? Can the fire department throttle attention for Verizon's troubles during such a fire?

</comment><comment><USER29> If corporations are willing to suicide the planet and potentially billions of lives for dirty energy, why would a telco not sabotage health and safety services if it made them more money?

</comment><comment><USER30> Wouldn't net neutrality preclude them from receiving special treatment? If there's an exception for emergency services it's not neutrality.

<comment><USER31> I don't think so, as demonstrated by the fact that end users can pay different monthly fees for different speeds. Net neutrality focuses not on end-user access, but on content providers, and ensuring that all of them are treated equally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Maybe fire departments should throttle responses to fires at Verizon facilities ;)

</comment><comment><USER33> My biggest question is why fire departments are using consumer-level services over commercial-licensed radio bands when they could be using SDRs with the spectrum specifically allocated for land mobile communications for public safety and emergency services in the 1m to 10m VHF band?

<comment><USER12> Well, it's complicated. The short answer is, "because nobody's come up with a better solution yet."

Off the top of my head:

In big incidents, there's a ton of radio traffic flying around at different frequencies. You have to make sure they don't interfere. Cellular handles this pretty well out-of-the-box.

There are myriad electronics and devices in use, including wireless printers and laptops, so whatever you come up with has to play nice with wifi and also offer a wifi<->your_thing bridge. Again, cellular hotspots do this out of the box.

Bandwidth is really important. GIS is a big part of operations, so that's a lot of high-resolution map tiles flying through the air, and when it takes time to load or print a map, it can really jam up operations. Seconds count.

It needs to be maintainable by a large number of people. If there are just three people in the whole state who know how to troubleshoot and fix your system, it's no good.

It can't be stupidly, ridiculously expensive.

It has to work in all kinds of terrain. IC can't just squirt signals through hills.

Somebody could probably invent a solution that does all those things.

But they haven't yet.

<comment><USER34> > Bandwidth is really important. GIS is a big part of operations, so that's a > lot of high-resolution map tiles flying through the air, and when it takes > time to load or print a map, it can really jam up operations. Seconds count.

Is there a reason that map tiles have to be accessed real time over the Internet and can't be update for eg. daily and kept on a local hard drive? Is it too large? For a fire department it could be only the area that they operate in.

<comment><USER12> Mostly technical effort. I'm not sure what fire/OES uses for GIS. The system we use does have a locally-hosted option, but that requires someone knowing how to update it and what to do if the server stops behaving.

> _For a fire department it could be only the area that they operate in._

Not really. Mutual aid happens often enough that that's not really a bet you want to make.

Especially in the case of CalOES resources, which are sent from disaster to disaster all over the state.

<comment><USER34> > Not really. Mutual aid happens often enough that that's not really a bet you > want to make.

Well in that case it could fall back to Internet access, I guess. Just keep the map of the local area as cache.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The fact that they started throttling at all during an emergency is criminal. Charges would be filed if this had been any other type of service (mechanics raising rates, gas price gouging, landlines refusing service without additional payment, an intentional 911 outage, etc, etc).

Either we need more regulation, or the county should withdraw Verizon's right of way. There needs to be severe recourse when public utilities engage in hostage taking.

</comment><comment><USER36> To me as i build cell phone towers for many carriars i will say this. If each carriar would understand or take in the matter of fact as what do they call unlimited i would like to figure that out. First off text and voice and calls are unlimited but data is never unlimited because there will always be a cap hello people and businesses out there. If we were all smart and we all went to court on this unlimited plan issue we would all be rich. If a plan cost $100 and its unlimted that means there should be no cap on data ussage any time you have an account. I will always also question a cell phone store about unlimited data because it is so totaly false really it is. People have to really look at how much data do we use each day while we have a cell phone. I laugh all sorry to say i know i am in the cell phone world my self i do shake my head alot and i will say this. When or in time will agencies figure this unlimited plans out the right way and not screw people or lower there speeds.

</comment><comment><USER37> Nothing I'm about to write is meant to excuse Verizon.

There are two types of "unlimited" when it comes to cell phone plans in the US.

\- After you go over a certain limit, your data speeds are immediately throttled down to a lower, usually unusable rate.

\- after you go over a certain limit, your data is "deprioritized" to let less heavy users in the same area have full speed.

In the 2nd case, you could go a whole month without being noticeable throttled if you aren't in a congested area.

Unlike wired internet, you can't just "build more capacity" over the air. There is a theoretical limit on how much bandwidth you can have at a certain frequency range and some frequency ranges aren't suitable for communications (I know I'm butchering the explanation).

The second definition of "unlimited" is defensible because of the reality of delivering data over the air. What Verizon calls "unlimited" is not.

<comment><USER17> There is only one defensible definition of "unlimited" and that is:

\- Your data is given the same priority for the entire duration of the plan regardless of how much is used. Bandwidth may be decreased because of congestion, but no specific action will be taken to deprioritize it based on usage level.

Wireless ISPs may not want to sell plans like that, but that doesn't mean you can redefine the word "unlimited" to mean something different from what it plainly means. If QOS measures are specifically targeted based on whether your usage has crossed a certain threshold, that is clearly a limit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I mean, I get that this looks bad. But they were using a lot of data and they had to switch from a $39 plan to a $99 one. That's still not a lot of money for such a service.

<comment><USER39> Not even remotely accurate.

First off, they used 25GB of data - that's not what any rational person would consider "a lot" for an emergency service fighting a wildfire. It's not even "a lot" in the generic sense in 2018 in any country that isn't the US or Cuba.

Second, the new plan is $99 for the first 20GB, and $8/GB thereafter. In other words, just to get back to baseline they would be at $139 which they blew through in a day or two. So you're talking several thousand dollars vs. $39 for a resource that costs Verizon nearly nothing to provide during an emergency such as this.

<comment><USER40> Does the fact that the government seems to have done nearly no due diligence regarding capacity planning play a factor in your criticism of Verizon? They relied on one emergency device with one communication link and thought $39/mo was sufficient apparently. That's silly and incompetent for any IT professional.

<comment><USER41> The article makes it seem like Verizon told them it would not be throttled. "We made a mistake in how we communicated with our customer about the terms of its plan"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Wait, so what you're telling me is, in the absence of accountability, telecom corporations _won 't_ just act in good faith?

</comment><comment><USER43> Why are wireless plans sold by data instead of by bandwidth, like wired plans? Don't sell me 20 GB/mo, rather sell me 1.5 Mbps min capacity with the ability to burst if the network isn't congested. It's the bandwidth which is the constrained resource. Obviously there might sometimes be physical factors that prevent even the minimum.

</comment><comment><USER44> >Verizon's throttling was described in fire department emails beginning June 29 of this year, just weeks after the FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules took effect.

Does throttling in this manner violate network neutrality rules? The 25GB/mo cap is enforced in a way that is neutral to applications or users.

<comment><USER31> If they provide services that do not count against the 25GB/mo cap (e.g. Verizon's own video streaming service) while other competing services (e.g. Netflix) do, then probably, yes.

If not, then probably not, no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I wonder if this article is being pushed by FirstNet[1] to sow public ire at Verizon.

[1] [https://theintercept.com/2018/07/29/firstnet-att- surveillanc...](https://theintercept.com/2018/07/29/firstnet-att- surveillance/)

</comment><comment><USER46> And why are there not telecoms contingency plans for natural disasters? where civilian subs would get put to the back of the line or turned off entirely

I know some one who did that for BT planning for various civil disasters nuclear melt downs etc - went on some interesting courses apparently.

</comment><comment><USER47> The oes 5262 if anyone is interested:

[http://s239.photobucket.com/user/smokeybehr/library/Fire%20a...](http://s239.photobucket.com/user/smokeybehr/library/Fire%20and%20EMS/oes%205262?sort=3&page=1)

</comment><comment><USER48> "unlimited" _MUST_ be unlimited, not Verizon unlimited, or any other unlimited!

</comment><comment><USER49> This is actually an argument against net neutrality.

If critical services are to use the internet for comms, then shouldn't these services get higher quality of service?

And shouldn't this higher quality cost more?

</comment><comment><USER50> It sounds like a good time for the fire department to switch to Project Fi. Would be good publicity for Project Fi if that happens.

They're upfront about exactly what you're buying. No illusions.

<comment><USER51> Many public safety agencies go with Verizon because they're the only carrier that has service out in the middle of nowhere. These fires aren't in San Jose, they're all over the state. California fire pulls from local agencies when the wildfires get massive and rely on exactly these kinds of mobile command trucks to coordinate the efforts.

Project Fi is a joke when it comes to coverage.

I truly don't see why Verizon didn't just waive the caps for this one SIM card. Ridiculous and it's a huge PR shitstorm for them. (Not that I'm crying, they suck.)

<comment><USER52> Verizon also owns the lower-frequency bands that are better able to penetrate buildings.

<comment><USER53> I think there is an entire 100mhz frequency band chunk just for emergency services. It should be the other way around, when there is no emergency Verizon should be able to use this (35 mi LTE at 600mhz anyone?) and when there is an emergency, it should be exclusive to emergency services.

The military should be running these forest fires anyway with a dozen C130/727 flying non-stop around the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Well, sure. It's not like a human is on the other end checking the final "ok" before throttling somebody's data speed because they have exceeded some threshold.

</comment><comment><USER55> Cut through all the fine legal crap arguments here.

1) Verizon and their ilk are happy to blatantly misrepresent their offerings (and no, fine print footnotes/end notes don't count).

2) Verizon and their ilk, far from being decent corporate citizens and coming to the aid of firefighters, DO NOT CARE care if their misrepresentation gets people killed, as long as they can extract their maximum toll.

The business model is not to provide better service in a competitive environment, it is to capture the regulatory agencies so that they can extract the maximum rents, regardless of consequences.

</comment><comment><USER56> This has _gotta_ be the last straw right towards classiying ISPs as utilities? Or is there a lobby for this too?

</comment><comment><USER57> I can't use every gear ratio on my 18-speed bike but I'm not upset by this relevation.

</comment><comment><USER58> I disdain Pajit's FCC, but I fail to see what this incident has to do with net neutrality.

<comment><USER35> The article points out that as a (probably intentional, I think) side effect of the network neutrality appeal, it is no longer possible for the fire department to file a complaint about this with the FCC

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> The real problem with the "throttling" is that it slows it down to uselessness.

</comment><comment><USER60> internet needs to be made into a public utility.

</comment><comment><USER61> >Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire's ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services

Interfering with emergency services is a felony. Whoever signed off on throttling them after learning that doing so would inhibit crisis-response ought to be arrested.

<comment><USER40> Armchair grandstanding.

If an EMT asks a bystander for help and he refuses, he did not commit a crime.

<comment><USER62> The situation with Verizon is more like a case of an EMT asking a bystander to get out of the way, which the bystander absolutely has an obligation to comply with. But it's complicated by the fact that Verizon isn't just a bystander but a company that had an existing contract with the fire department, and had previously been informed that their throttling was causing problems.</comment></comment></comment>


How companies hire software engineers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Jobeir/how-companies-hire <comment><USER2> This is great! I just submitted a PR to fix a broken link.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks kaikai! I managed to read your mind and fixed the broken link right before your PR. Thanks for checking it out and the feedback.</comment></comment>


My Google job was tedious and pointless - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/10/17/my-google-job-was-tedious-and-pointless/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_1_na&utm_term=.fc2705c5456a <comment><USER2> I worked at Google in a more technical role but I sympathize with this guy. The culture was awful and empty. It was sugar-coated candies and colors and happy, happy, happy like it was meant for a kindergartener.

The politics were thick and covered everything. Executives got on stage at a company meeting and cried about the election. It was a cult, and not in the good way that a startup can sometimes be, but in a stale way that felt like death.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, a lot of people were upset over the election, and given what's happened over the last ten months, those feelings seem to have been justified.

But yeah, god damn a company for having a culture where people don't go around acting like jerks towards one another. God forbid we grow out of Kindergarten and get back to the real world where people are unhappy and take out their frustrations by raking their coworkers verbally over the coals.

<comment><USER4> I don't think an executive should ever complain about an election. They should focus on making their company successful and a good work place.

<comment><USER5> What if the result of an election hinders their ability to be successful and create a good work place?

I think there is a fair debate to be had about where the line should be drawn, but pretending that politics doesn't exist if you don't talk about it is deluded.

For example, Google employs a good number of immigrants. After the election many of them would have been worried about their future in the country. Wouldn't a good workplace try to address those concerns?

<comment><USER6> It is still not appropriate to complain (or rather cry...) about in a professional setting, imo. How can you expect to have confidence in an executive when they put on an act like that? Nothing says "I don't know what to do" more.

Yes, you are now facing some additional hardships in your job of creating a good workplace where employees can succeed. Those concerns should be addressed within the scope of what the company can or cannot do.

It seems like priorities would shift into protecting immigrant employees and that's okay - that is a hardship that the position entails and is something that should've been addressed long in advance as immigration reform was and probably always will be a controversial topic in the USA.

<comment><USER7> That's just your uninformed opinion then. Showing empathy is also a great quality in a leader. You weren't there, so how can you judge?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The headline is a bit deceptive given it's written by an internal recruiter; I imagine anyone not working as part of a business' main thrust could find the same problem. That said, it does sound horribly tedious and pointless. Of my two interactions with Google hiring (both failures on my part, both pre-2006), one was enjoyable but messy and the second was brusque and confusing.

<comment><USER9> This was my reaction too. Mike Rowe would probably look dimly upon the author's complaints. Sometimes, companies hire people to do unpleasant jobs, and convince them to do these jobs by paying them.

But, it's tough to have that conversation from the position of privilege one sits in when one gets paid even more to do an interesting job, because of the scarcity of people capable of performing in that role. Presumably the kid understands this harsh reality, and the complaint is more reflective of a general disillusionment that the situation is as it is, rather than an aversion to the particularities of this role at Google.

<comment><USER10> > Sometimes, companies hire people to do unpleasant jobs, and convince them to > do these jobs by paying them.

What I got was that the requirement for overt enthusiasm over a mundane job became too much. I don't think Mike Row would see it the same way if a sewage technician was forced to pretend their job was "making a better world one bowel movement at a time" or face being ostracized.

<comment><USER9> I did not get the sense that the author was ostracized. Rather, they were put off by other people's enthusiasm. "Am I the only one here who can see this job is crap?" I can totally understand that feeling being crazy-making, but it's different than being ostracized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While the job doesn't sound like it involves "cool things that matter" and paints a pretty believable picture of working at a large corporation, I do find it interesting that this was published by thr Washington Post. Being owned by Amazon, a direct competitor to Google on many fronts (the war for cloud computing market share is/will continue to be huge), it seems suspicious that this is truly unbiased coverage. It strikes me as a possible next iteration of native advertising. This is not an attack on WP -- just something I thought might be worth discussing. The tech giants are becoming increasingly more powerful and this could be a new frontier to assert that power.

<comment><USER12> The Washington Post is not owned by Amazon. It is owned by Jeff Bezos, who also is CEO of Amazon.

<comment><USER13> Distinction without a difference maybe?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been interviewing with Google, and by my count I've interacted with about 5 different recruiters for two roles. It's strange how specialized they are, and the communication overhead seems high.

> Google HR uses the TextExpander program, which populates email templates > with salutations, job description links and questions.

If it's any consolation, gmail's reply suggestions were frequently sufficient on the candidate's side.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wouldn't working as a recruiter be tedious at any company?

<comment><USER16> If the recruiter is given specific hiring criteria that are hard but not impossible to satisfy, I could imagine looking for people who fit those requirements and persuading them to sign up would be a satisfying job of search, selection and salesmanship.

But that's not what these Google recruiters are doing. They are trying to find any vaguely qualified people they can who are willing to dive head-first into the meat-grinder that is the Google interview process. And their job is mostly futile because that process will ultimately reject 90-95% of the candidates.

<comment><USER17> Sounds like these recruiters could be replaced by a simple google search...

<comment><USER16> It's kind of weird they need recruiters at all. There is no more famous tech company than Google. You'd think they would get enough applicants just through their main website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To be fair to Google (can't believe I said that), sounds about as painful as similar role at another large company would probably be. Most expect their employees to drink some Kool-Aid (one of the side benefits to being a contractor/mercenary is being able to exist somewhat outside that world).

<comment><USER19> I have family that works at Google and I remember a group of their friends reporting they very much preferred the switch to consultant for Google rather than Google employee. They wanted to be outside the internal political bubble. From what I recall the distaste surrounded a lot of the performance review song and dance and promotional squabbles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most of the responsibility, minus the technical interview, seems like it could be done by an AI sometime in the future anyway. No more complaints afterwards!

<comment><USER21> I found Google's dev interview to be especially difficult, I personally hate doing hours of whiteboard coding (sorry, I tend to code on computers instead, silly me) ... So I wasn't hired, but those who worked as devs there told me that's a blessing because after all the rigorous interviewing bluster they'll assign devs to remedial code refactoring anyway. I'm not a rockstar coder above doing the housekeeping work but doesn't sound fun either. Why hire top coders then assign them intern busy work? I wonder if the strategy was to just drain the local talent pool of top coders so competitors had less of a candidate pool. Just odd to set the interview bar so high, and for what purpose?

<comment><USER22> I don't work at Google, but code refactoring is critically important in the real world. It's not intern work.

<comment><USER23> Why not, like, test refactoring skills? Mind blown!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've been coding for 20 years but some random fresh face out of university goes into HR and looks over my CV and decides whether I'm suitable for an employer or not. Neverlmind that they can barely tell the difference between Java and Javascript. I mean what the fuck, you've got a university diploma, which I don't even have, and THAT's your job? What a waste.

Your job is tedious and pointless, end of story.

</comment><comment><USER25> >Google HR uses the TextExpander program, which populates email templates with salutations, job description links and questions. All we have to do is press two keys (mine are semicolon followed by the letter "C"). There's also space for fill-in-the-blanks: one for the candidate's name ("Hey Mark") and another at the end for the day of the week ("Enjoy your Thursday!"), so the message is personal.

This step should have been 100% automated and I don't understand why it wasn't. As a recruiter this shit was my least favorite part of the job. The next step - the candidate calls - was my favorite part.

<comment><USER26> Automated emails are pretty shit, and easy to spot. They also tend to turn off most people, making recruiting more difficult.

<comment><USER27> Yep. Any time I see a recruiter try to automate initial contact using a tool like Jobdiva or some such, it's an instant disqualification. Most of the time it's just plain shotgunned out and I never hear anything beyond the initial email. I had one recruiter, after doing that, call me and inquire -- I told him no, and explained to him that I don't do business with those who willingly use spamming tools.

<comment><USER25> I get why it's frustrating, but one way or the other the job has to get filled. When I was a recruiter I'd blast out emails as well, but only to candidates I actually thought were qualified.

Knowing that of 20 people the recruiter knows that are a good fit, only 2 might be available, what would _your_ preferred method be of them going about their job?

<comment><USER27> Don't use a blast. It lacks the personalization. If it looks like a form letter, I assume you did keyword matching (which is the case 90+% of the time) and you're just playing a recruiter game of Glengarry Glen Ross.

Be upfront and honest is another one. I see lots of recruiters try and be sneaky and play phishing games. There's a reason why my current employer isn't listed by name on my resume. Plenty of times recruiters have contacted me, promising a job, but it's only to grill me about my current position to find other people there they can hit up, or contacts within HR, etc. Or it's just a plain ol' resume-sending event and they want nothing more than me to bulk up their database.

With that upfront and honesty in place, be willing to provide key information to the candidate upon initial contact -- it'll save you and them a lot of time. I want, as a minimum (and usually no more), the client, the location (may need specifics depending upon the city, for example "Dallas" isn't very descriptive as Dallas is huge), and the employment type/term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm not sure it's exactly breaking news that the most entry-level basic role in a department is boring and repetitive. The only reason this article is even getting run is because it has "Google" in the headline.

</comment><comment><USER29> As someone who has worked at a large corp. for a bunch of years I can say the job you have may feel awful but you're at a company where you can network with people who do anything you are curious about.

The same could be said to the person writing this article. You work at Google.. your recruiting job might be awful but get your earbuds out during lunch and see if you might work at another team internally that is more in line with what you wanted to do.

Take some ownership of what you'd like to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> Recruiting is outsourced at many companies. I'm not sure why this person thought it would be a hugely interesting job. Perhaps if they were an engineering major and were working on ways to automate recruiting searches, or improve the false positive/false negative rates, it would have been interesting, but it doesn't sound like this person was hired for anything but to man the phones.

From that standpoint, it seems like #firstworldproblems. Someone who lacks the skills to be a SWE gets hired at one of the most prestigious companies, most likely has awesome benefits and a comfortable job, but boring and unfulfilling. Contrast that with the millions of people in who work for far less salary and benefits, in low end service sector jobs, and it just seems tone deaf to me.

I understand the feelings of not having a good fit for your work and wanting to do other things, but there's a huge difference between "I need a change cause I find what I'm doing boring, even if the pay and benefits is good" and "This is the WORST! Clearly, I was owed an interesting job at a candy unicorn factory, and since I didn't get the toys I thought I would, I'm suffering worse than a Soviet gulag here."

<comment><USER26> This narrative that only engineers deserve to have interesting and fulfilling jobs needs to end. It's nothing but elitism, and adding the "#firstworldproblems" doesn't do anything to help your cause.

<comment><USER30> I read the OP post as "not everyone deserves an interesting and fulfilling job" rather than "only engineers deserve an interesting job"

<comment><USER26> Me too, but they definitely skewed toward "those that deserve an interesting and fulfilling job are engineers".

<comment><USER3> It's impossible for every job task that needs to be done to always be interesting and fulfilling, even engineering jobs. Sometimes there's dirty work that had to be done that just sucks, and someone has to be paid to do it. My point is, if I advertise a job to clean toilets, don't show up and complain that cleaning toilets is boring. I know its boring, but I have to paid someone to do it, or buy self-cleaning Japanese toilets. I've had coding jobs before that were metaphorical equivalent of toilet cleaning, and I hated them, but sometimes you need to make rent. I did the work, hated it, and then went on to other more interesting things (founded a startup). I didn't bother submitting an editorial to a newspaper on the experience. It just seems self indulgent to me.

<comment><USER26> Right, but you specifically called out someone as "not having the skills as a SWE."

<comment><USER3> I didn't mean it in the sense "he is inferior to SWEs", I mean it from the sense that Google is a tech company, and at tech companies, the interesting jobs where new product development happens generally goes to engineers, PMs, product and UI designers.

It would be no different than if I went to work at a Hospital, I'd end up in claims processing or administration probably, and someone could say "he's not a doctor or nurse or medically trained, so of course, he's pushing paper"

To some extent, it's up to you to make your job interesting and fulfilling. If this guy spent 2 years doing HR and it was a grind, then he knew all the pain points and probably how to improve the workflow. Why didn't he take the initiative, get some coworkers together, and try to design a better system rather than wear earplugs eating alone in the cafe?

Google expects and depends on people to take initiative. If my project is not interesting, either I find another team that has a more interesting project, or I invent a project for myself and shop it to cosigners. I'm not supposed to sit here stewing in unhappiness for years waiting for my manager to say "oh, I noticed you aren't being fulfilled. Here's a new project to fulfill you."

It's not that only SWEs matter. Most startups have a technical founder and a non-technical founder. Non-technical skills often matter more than technical ones.

<comment><USER26> "I didn't mean it in the sense "he is inferior to SWEs","

That may not have been your intent, but that was how it came across.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So that's where those calls come from. I used to get cold calls from Google recruiters who seemed clueless. I finally told them to put me on their do-not- call list.

</comment><comment><USER32> Maybe this person can try working a factory line and see how empowering other jobs can be.

But Ok, I'll buy the author's point that the job sucked. What's the news here? The cynic in me says this is Bezos using WaPo as proxy for the Amazon/Google fight.

</comment><comment><USER25> I really hope this article doesn't take off.

I understand the pain of this person, but this has literally nothing to do with Google, and everything to do with: Recruitment Sucks.

It's a fucking annoying, mind boggling job. If you're external, there's a couple highs when you negotiate a salary or are selling a candidate on a position or in a business development meeting with some bigshot at an engineering firm. But _mostly_ , it's calling 10 candidates a day (at least) even if you have nothing to pitch, because you're fishing for information but really because your boss told you you have to make 10 candidate calls a day or you're fired.

It's 5 business development calls a day, even if there really isn't anybody new to talk to, and if you already contacted you entire network that month, because... reasons? Because your boss said so. Hit your numbers, 5am hit the phones! Coffee is for closers ABC ALWAYS BE CLOSING

"I gotta stay late and make these calls," he says as he sucks the recruitment/sales koolaid, despite knowing that extra calls will literally lead to no extra money for himself or the company.

"I make 25 candidate calls a day because you never know what juicy tidbits of information a candidate might have," she says despite the fact that we all in the city know the same story - the oil and gas market is dead, everybody's losing their job, and any new project already has 5,000 applicants before the recruiters can touch "9" to dial out.

Browsing linkedin - copy paste name into the name field of Bullhorn, then email, hmm do they have a resume? Download, upload to Bullhorn. Skip the "create candidate from resume" option because it sucks. Do this 20 times a day - "we need to build out our system with good candidates so we're ready when a position opens," despite the fact that linkedin and oilandgasjobsearch.com search function are 10x better than Bullhorn's so I'll just be using that anyway.

God, sorry, rant, but this kid joined a job where you feel useless, where you _know_ you'll be automated away, where you barely understand the field you're working in ("oh you're static tank mech E uh this position is looking for rotating"), where that super weird American/British "sales" culture has totally infiltrated and everyone gets their rocks off to Wolf of Wallstreet and glengarry glen ross.

So, long story short, I was in this kid's shoes a little over 2 years ago, and I fucked off to San Francisco, went to a bootcamp, now I'm frontend and it rates among the top 3 decisions I have ever made in my life, and I'm sure that so far it's the most significant and far-reaching decision in terms of longterm happiness.

In the bootcamp, I saw 2 projects come out from 3-month-trained frontend devs automate a large portion of my recruitment job. It's going.

</comment><comment><USER33> It doesn't say anything about what it is to actually work at Google. Maybe rephrase to working in HR sucks. I doubt this person even worked at MTV. I worked at Google and it is an amazing place to work at (beercart Friday!) the only reason I left is because living in the Bay Area sucks.

<comment><USER34> So, the single example that you reach for when describing google as an amazing place to work is "beercart Friday?"

<comment><USER33> Yes the bar at Google is very high and after busting my ass all week solving ridiculously hard problems having someone drop a cold beer and nachos on my desk on a Friday afternoon shows that Google takes employee satisfaction very seriously

<comment><USER35> Cant tell if sarcasm

<comment><USER36> Kyragem is channeling Ken M

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> While the fluffy headline promises a revelation about Google, this article is actually a poignant lament on the future of work automation.

The piece's author holds a humanities degree in Psych/Neuroscience.

I point that out because while we've accepted that blue collar jobs are/were "going to be automated" or "going overseas", there's still a pervasive trope that an undergraduate degree provides some protection and is of value unto itself in the workforce.

But - as evidenced by his systematic experience of key-pressing - his position @ Google is a stop gap, in the same way that the humans in Uber's vehicles are a tolerated inconvenience.

This while the people the company ACTUALLY values, at present, are the engineers - tasked with devising new ways to automate, regulate, and systematically eliminate human fallibility from the equation.

Solving the problem of what to do with the millions of us that take steps to educate ourselves, want to contribute, but realize that we're a poor facsimile of the machine that will eventually eliminate our jobs, is the central question of our generation.

<comment><USER38> Don't know about "poignant" \- this reads like "I chose the wrong career and it's Google's fault" \- but 100% yes, this is one of the biggest societal issues we face.

The author may have realized a bit late that he doesn't enjoy HR, but he still deserves a chance to pivot. That's getting harder in our economic system and with automation and outsourcing.

<comment><USER39> I remember looking at Hacker News in 1895 and remember the fear of automation was just as noteworthy then. Weird how increasing automation over the past 200 years has led to record low poverty and a higher standard sign living that would have unimaginable.

<comment><USER38> Once we resolve the issue of people being automated out of their careers then of course automation will be a net positive on society. You don't have to tell me - I work in machine learning and data. These are basically growing pains that require a societal paradigm shift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Quicken Loans in Detroit is the same thing to a T

</comment><comment><USER41> Is working HR interesting at any company though? There's really nothing of substance in this rant at all; I'm curious why the wapo thought this was fit for publication.

</comment><comment><USER42> >Yet Google's low-level HR employees are barraged by higher-ups about Passion! and how we are Changing People's Lives!

Does anyone seriously listen to that kind of talk? It's a job - in this case helping to sell advertising - why try to pretend it's some kind of religious calling? Why do so many companies insist on spewing that claptrap?

</comment><comment><USER43> I remember interviewing for them on site and saying "no thanks I'm not a good fit" after the first interview. They sounded so corporately boring...

</comment><comment><USER44> Can't believe the author can write this article and not see the glaring problems. This is a narrow minded article that speaks to one person not fitting in, not a widespread problem like he tries to make it seem. If you wear ear plugs at lunch something is obviously not clicking. It sounds much more like the author isn't a fit for the company.. there is no mention of having friends or anyone positivity about the job.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just proves ... its not the company: it is the job that counts.

<comment><USER19> that's exactly right! I tell my younger mentees that you can work for companies that are doing cutting edge stuff, but watch what you are actually doing and contributing to that. Are you growing and being challenged as a productive individual. At best one would have to be content playing an indirect role that aides the development of cutting edge research or whatever. I guess the fallacy for the author was assuming a few degrees of indirection in a supporting role was going to be life changing and doing things that mattered. I like seeing his honesty in reporting that things from him vantage point from all the action was in the end not all that meaningful for him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> A Person With Boring Job Is Bored At Work.

</comment><comment><USER46> Two words: mail merge

<comment><USER47> That's essentially what they're doing! They've got an automated form. The recruiter's job is to screen linkedin profiles for qualified candidates; The tedious bit of the mail (two keypresses and typing their name) is just gravy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Why the Damore video without any kind of context? It's like they're trying to push a narrative here.

<comment><USER49> Just as this HR underling's life is a soulless tedium of selecting stock phrases, that video was chosen automatically (which is to say, even less soullessly) by a context matching algorithm.

Now if you think that a narrative is being pushed here then I have a Rorschach test I'd like you to take.

<comment><USER48> Or maybe it's fucking stupid to have an automatic system picking related videos and inserting them in posts in a way that makes them look like they're the main video of the post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> My fiance is a recruiter at Google, and while she still has issues with work or has a complaint every now and then, she embraces her job and is a top performer. She finds pride in finding people that normally wouldn't think they could get a job at Google, and push them through process, and once they get hired she takes satisfaction that yes, she in fact did help change their life and or career.

Anyone can make the claim that there job sucks, or the company they work for tries to brainwash them, or maybe they feel overqualified for what they are doing. If you have an issue with your job you change it. I applaud the author for making the change, but I find it terribly unprofessional and kind of childish that he would rant about his previous employer when they didnt do anything wrong to him...</comment>


"Adobe Experience Design" (formerly Adobe Comet) is now available - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/introducing-adobe-experience-design-cc-preview/ <comment><USER2> This looks awesome. But I'm still going to laughing at how silly the name looks while written. "Adobe XD" it's hard to in-see the hilarious laughter emoticon once you see it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Someone woke up the sleeping giant. Curious to see how this compares with Sketch. Simple interactive wireframes is huge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sketch has a great share of mind right now, and they managed to do what people needed the most in a really easy way, but there's nothing really attractive about it that can't easily be replicated (hence the number of clones out there).

It's more about the concepts it adopts rather than its execution. In my personal opinion, Sketch is Really Bad Software, with some many UI problems and discrepancies with features tackled on nonsensically that it baffles me it's not considered beta.

It's popular because everybody uses it, and everybody uses it because it's popular, but once a more solid solution exists, I think they're going to be in a pretty bad position.

Adobe has its own woes and has produced plenty of Really Bad Software, but they've been at it for so long that if they're really focused and put their brightest to the task, there's no stopping them.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Taking notes in a meeting with an iPad - <AUTHOR>

Are you using your iPad to take notes during meetings? What app do you like using to take meeting notes? <comment><USER2> I am a big fan of Evernote, since I prefer typing. The fact this it is also cross platform, supports tagging, and does some basic OCR on pics I take with my iPhone (whiteboards mostly) make it my favorite.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been switching between Simplenote, Notes Plus, and Penultimate. I like the sketching features of Notes Plus and Penultimate.

I haven't tried Evernote yet - I'll try it today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I do. Depending if it needs sketches or not I either Simplenote or Jot!</comment>


Show HN: BeeLine Reader now has Chrome and Firefox plugins - <AUTHOR> http://www.BeeLineReader.com/install

<comment><AUTHOR> It's been a couple months since we posted our Show HN (which yielded lots of useful feedback—thanks!), and we wanted to circle back with the HN community to share some new and improved BeeLine tools.

We now have Chrome and Firefox plugins, which are much faster, support custom color schemes, and can be invoked using keyboard shortcuts. We still have bookmarklets available for users of other browsers.

We have also just finished developing iOS APIs, so please contact us (firstname.lastname@example.com) if you are interested in integrating BeeLine functionality into your app.

</comment><comment><USER2> What's with the OpenDyslexic font? Is that supposed to be easier to read?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, some dyslexic folks find that it makes reading easier, and we got a lot of requests for it. Apparently BeeLine is super helpful for some dyslexic people and they wanted to be able to get the best of both worlds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great job. Looking forward to checking it out!</comment>


Deno, a secure TypeScript runtime using V8 and Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ry/deno <comment><AUTHOR> Worth noting, this is from the creator of Node.js, Ryan Dahl (not me - <USER2> sharing). The project is in very early stages, but considering it's from Ryan... it's definitely a project to keep an eye on.

<comment><USER3> Not exactly sure why you would want to provide JavaScript scripting for Go. Go has different concurrency primitives and a different threading model, and that threading model is one of the biggest selling points of Go.

I highly doubt this would be "the next node", if that is the intention. If you want to use Go, just use Go.

<comment><USER4> You can use it as a scripting language for your app. For example, a go binary with customizable hooks scripted in JS. That way anyone who knows JS can customize the binary for their specific use case.

<comment><USER5> Like openresty/Nginx with Lua integration. JavaScript is way more popular than Lua, so this have wide possibilities..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just realized the creator just scrambled the word "node" to have a new name.

<comment><USER7> At least he didn't call it "Done"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Finally, golang gets user accessible generics.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is from the creator of node. Is that you?

I was playing with v1 of this project (the non-TS one). Super excited to see progress on it. What are your plans?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not me, just sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Lol "Status: segfaulty"

<comment><USER10> Mmm. Some may find that scary; I'd make it a link to an issue explaining/tracking what exactly causes it.

<comment><USER11> Roadmap suggests it has something to do with source maps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What is this? A Node.js runtime equivalent for TypeScript? But written in Go and V8?

Is it single threaded, non-blocking IO? Or will it more closely aligned with Go coroutines? i.e. do I have to deal with callbacks and/or async/await?

<comment><USER13> Looks like it's aiming to be async/await compliant but dunno how that is implemented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What kind of performance hit do you incur on something like file read serializing in and out of protobuf? Also, what is the problem this is trying to solve when it says "secure"? Obviously the code is not that secure because TypeScript is a bit loose on purpose (so, why TypeScript and not just a Go sandbox?). From reading, it seems to solve a problem of restricting local system access, so it's going to run unprivileged code? Surely there are many other exploitation factors such as running up the CPU...the primary use case would be ideal to help me understand.

<comment><USER15> > Surely there are many other exploitation factors such as running up the > CPU...the primary use case would be ideal to help me understand.

You're probably running untrusted JavaScript in your browser right now. The difference between the V8 in Node and the V8 in your browser is that one is heavily locked down and the other can do essentially whatever the OS lets it.

If you have untrusted code to run, you can eliminate a whole class of security concerns by just not having a way for the code to do those things (i.e., making syscalls it shouldn't, forking, reading and writing to the disk or network, etc.). Sure, resource use can be an issue, but that's a problem that's more easily solvable further up the stack with VMs or containers. Just putting an instance of Node running untrusted code in a VM doesn't solve much, since the mechanism whereby you give it input and collect output can be manipulated by the untrusted code itself.

By making the runtime secure, you get the security of the browser (i.e., being able to visit a website without having to wipe your machine), but designed to run in a server environment.

<comment> le-mark _but that 's a problem that's more easily solvable further up the stack with VMs or containers._

Everyone keeps saying this, let containers handle cpu/heap but I keep asking myself, is it really optimal?

<comment><USER15> I mean, it certainly depends. But relying on your interpreter to manage CPU scheduling and memory use is almost certainly less ideal than letting your OS/hypervisor do that for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Binary size 55 meg, compared to Node's 30. Is this an artifact of Go's "dynamic linking considered harmful" approach or does it have some additional functionality I'm missing?

<comment><USER17> > Go's "dynamic linking considered harmful" approach

If anything this is only partially true: _" Package plugin implements loading and symbol resolution of Go plugins."_

[https://golang.org/pkg/plugin](https://golang.org/pkg/plugin)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can someone compare it with ts-node?

If I get it right, ts-node is just a transpiler, but deno runs "proper" ts?

<comment><USER13> Exactly what it seems like

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I guess the idea is to use URL's for importing packages. And have an extra security layer in the runtime.

I've done some concept/prototype for this but in the browser, and the main complaint is that it takes a few extra ms the first time you run the program. But as this is meant for servers and not impatient users, the extra startup time should not be a big issue.

<comment><USER20> Importing URLs is how ES modules work afaik

<comment><USER11> Right, the pluggable Loader spec [1] can keeps getting kicked down the road, and the Browsers haven't agreed yet on Node-style or non-URL-based loading. To the Browsers, URLs "just work" and is how they've always done things, and figuring out Node-like package boundaries or mapping package names to URLs hasn't seemed like a priority to them yet.

[1] [https://github.com/whatwg/loader](https://github.com/whatwg/loader)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ryan Dahl reserved the domain too, expect [http://denojs.org](http://denojs.org) to be the main website to this project!

</comment><comment><USER22> README doesn't specify, so I'll ask: does anyone know how it supports TS? Does it just strip out all the TS stuff and pipe it into the parser?

<comment><USER23> looks like it is using the typescript API to compile the TS code at runtime

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this to add a scripting language to Go, like Lua is to Redis? It's a little unclear.

<comment><USER25> It would seem that the goal is to be modernized node that defaults to Typescript instead of Javascript and uses vgo-style package management instead of npm (or similar).

<comment><USER26> using go then directly code in Go.</comment></comment></comment>


Satanic group reveals crowdfunded monument for Oklahoma State Capitol - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/3/5678782/satanic-group-reveals-crowdfunded-monument-for-oklahoma-state-capitol

<comment><USER2> I'm no fanatic, but Common Law is based on the 10 commandments. What excuse for this silly statue? Only 1: to be rebellious and cute. If its rejected (and it will be) it'll be meaningless.</comment>


Ask HN: How Do You Optimize Your Intake of Information? - <AUTHOR> As someone with varied interests, I feel myself being pulled in a thousand different directions of things I want to know more about. This leads to a sense of anxiety and dread as I realize life is much too short to pursue all my interests.<p>Ideally, I'd make peace with that fact and choose one or two parts of the Universe to really care about, but my mind just doesn't seem to work that way. I'm not even sure I'd want it to. <comment><USER2> General interest/articles/websites: I choose a few aggregate newsletters, a few specialist pages, and combine them all via RSS. I use NewsBlur as my reader, and kill-the-newsletter to convert subscription newsletters into RSS feeds. This gives me one place to check a few times each day, rather than constantly checking the sites individually.

Books: I have a To Read list on my public library account where I keep track of books I want to read. Normally when I'm at the library I'll check to see which of those is available(a feature of their webapp) and grab a few.

News: I subscribe to Up First by NPR and PBS NewHour podcasts. This gives me a little over an hour of news each day, 10-15 minutes in the morning and an hour in the evening. This keeps me in the loop without feeling like I need to constantly be reading more.

Social Media: I only use instagram, and I only follow my friends and artists/craftspeople that work in media that I have personal interest.

Takeaway: I built a source of inputs that I value and lean heavily on those. Essentially, I have a small pool of information to consume, rather than drown in the ocean of what's available. I also routinely prune all of these sources, adding a few and removing a few.

</comment><comment><USER3> This question resonates with me, as I feel the same internal conflict as you. There's so much I want to do and learn, but I know I can literally never do it all... Which can just feel overwhelming at times.

What has helped me, is to accept to accept that we only have a few years in this life, figure out what actually matters to you and do that.

If optimising the intake of information is what matters to you, then do that!

</comment><comment><USER4> I still rely on books written by subject matter experts. Books are still the most dense for of knowledge, so you really get a good bang for your buck.

If you more general news type information, I would recommend a newsletter. They aggregate and summarize the information for.

</comment><comment><USER5> In late 2015, I wondered what it would be like to spend six months learning a single "tech" instead of flittering around. The wondering occurred in my journal -- I journal -- and I started listing candidates. The list grew longer over several entries and eventually got up to 57 "techs" as candidates.

My first thought was to pick something new so I "would be ahead in the game." In one or the other order I tried Perl 6 and Elm. Perl 6 lacked a coherent set of systematic resources at the time and Elm was then so unstable that tutorials fell apart within a few minutes of the most basic 'Hello World.'

I regrouped and decided to avoid the cutting edge and started thinking about learning things that are extremely stable instead. For me, these were Emacs, Linux, and Javascript. Javascript because I had been avoiding it (hence Elm); Emacs and Linux because I was using them all the time.

It's true I don't spend a lot of time learning Javascript, Emacs, and Linux these days. What happened was I learned enough of each that it's easier to learn more if I need to for example, sometimes I start with the man page before Googling and other times I stop Googling and just read the man page.

I'm not recommending Javascript, Emacs, and Linux per se. But what they gave me was a framework for deciding what to learn. It has to be worth spending a year with. It has to be small enough to fit in one person's head from scratch -- a small head in my case. Team sized technologies are out of the running.

To put it another way, I focused on learning "techs" I could live with. And one of the ways of recognizing those "techs" was that I was already living with them and that was in part because they had long lives. Sometimes I was using them already.

<comment><USER6> Just for the record: Perl 6 has since been renamed to Raku ([https://raku.org](https://raku.org) using the #rakulang tag on social media).

<comment><USER5> Back in 2015, it was still "Perl 6" as it had been for more than a decade and as it stayed until about six months ago. Rakudo Star 2015.09 had come out as "a useful, useable" release which was why I tried it. In a sense, the renaming points to how much still remained to be done over the next four years. Lots of little things that create small frictions. And it's easy to say "Well, just..." to each of them, and for other people that's surely enough but I learned that I didn't want to deal with it. Ultimately, it was a case of not fitting with the Perl 6 community, not because of hostility or anything negative. I didn't fit because Perl 6 assumed a background I didn't have and addresses an important set of problems that I don't have either. That's one of the important things I learned since selecting techs back in 2015.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I struggle with this too. So much to learn, so little time! Here is what I've been doing to cope with that feeling:

1\. I prefer books as the source of information, rather than materials online. This gives me structure, and stops me from jumping around like a highly caffeinated monkey. I can sit with a book and progressively relax and get deeper and deeper into a subject.

2\. [https://histre.com/](https://histre.com/) \- It's an automatic knowledge base that I'm building, and it helps me relax that nothing important will be lost. Links I browse are saved and can be easily found later. I also tag links, so that I can batch process related information later. I'm working on automatic tagging by subject.

3\. Mindfulness Meditation. It helps me let go of the grasping. When there is mental churn, I sit with that and watch that feeling. I feel calmer and I'm able to work in a more relaxed, efficient manner.

<comment><USER8> I'll checkout histre.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel the same. So many cool things I'd love to learn about, but not enough time.

I try not to cut myself off the information, but instead I change the way I process it and interact with:

1\. Minimize the time spent discovering the information.

Obvious step here is using RSS so you can read about interesting stuff when you feel like it, not when it appears in your news feed.

Another thing I'm doing is setting up search alerts for topics that interest me, so I can look at them once in a while (e.g. once in two weeks), skim through and bookmark the most promising ones for reading later. I'm using a tool I wrote myself that can search over hackernews, reddit, twitter, github, etc. for topics that interest me and convert to RSS feeds. It's kinda like Google search alerts, but nicer. I haven't documented it properly yet though, but started it here [0].

2\. Prioritize reading, don't read immediately

For example, I would only read Reddit once a week, going through the weekly top (and all of new posts for some select subreddits). On the first pass, I only bookmark stuff, I don't read it immediately (unless it's something really exceptional, or it makes sense to comment as soon as possibile). Another benefit is that I can also do it on the go, without spending mental resources on proper reading.

Now and then I would go through the list of saved items, and choose what I want to read next. That way it doesn't feel like I'm missing out on anything, I'm aware of the information and can find it in in case I want to catch up later.

Most apps offer a pretty horrible experience for such workflow (i.e. you can't put priorities/reorder/search), so I've got my own workflow using org-mode to process the information. That way I can also leave comments, or refile it in my knowledge base immediately. I'm describing it in more details here [1]

3\. Make it easy to find information

One big thing that reduces my FOMO is knowing that I can instantly find whatever interests me on my filesystem when I need it. I describe my system and setup here [2]. You can also get a glimplse at the public part of my wiki/knowledge base here [3]

[0] [https://beepb00p.xyz/axol.html](https://beepb00p.xyz/axol.html)

[1] [https://beepb00p.xyz/orger-todos.html#reddit](https://beepb00p.xyz/orger- todos.html#reddit)

[2] [https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm- search.html#personal_information](https://beepb00p.xyz/pkm- search.html#personal_information)

[3] [https://beepb00p.xyz/exobrain/](https://beepb00p.xyz/exobrain/)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for sharing! Feels like you've thought about this.

I've been trying to lesser the amount time spent on reading and listening to news. I always feel that I haven't actually missed out on much (anything) when getting home from a one or two week vacation not consuming news daily or multiple times a day.

Have you or anyone else here found a good way to "batch process" news? Say weekly.

RSS feeds I'd use more for interests. Or at least that's how I've thought about it.

<comment><USER9> Yep, agree that in hindsight most news feel quite unimportant. Personally, I stopped following any, except for specific topics I'm interested in (say, 'space exploration news'). I figured in most cases it just makes me frustrated (i.e. how dumb politicians are, or how ignorant are people, etc.), and in most cases I can't do much actionable about most of this frustration.

If it's something really important, it would seep through my twitter feed or even here on Hackernews. I understand it can be hard though, and it took me some conscious effort and time to get used to this.

Although I can't see why you can't use RSS? Then you can skim though the titles once a week, and read the ones you find the most important. It feels that it would be much easier to prioritize because you'd have an overview of everything that happened.</comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo Layoffs - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/yahoo-layoffs-live-yhoo

<comment><USER2> _Better off without Yahoo! So, you just got laid off from the struggling portal. Congratulations_

[http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/09/yahoo-layoffs-workers- tech-...](http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/09/yahoo-layoffs-workers-tech-ebiz- cx_bc_1209yahoo.html?partner=yahootix)

<comment><USER3> I read the Forbes article and while it was interesting, I thought that pointing out 1 large success out of thousands of layoffs was a bit misleading and a weak argument for 'feeling good' about leaving Yahoo!

It's great and all that this 1 guy has had success, but that means nothing to the thousands without jobs.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do loopt have agreements with network carriers - <AUTHOR>

Why do location dependent systems such as loopt have agreements with network carriers? Is it to support location or to pre-install the apps before sold? <comment><USER2> The iPhone OS doesn't allow background processes for third-party apps. So normally Loopt would have no way to update your location except when you open their app. The carrier deal lets them get location data straight from the carrier, whether their app is open or not:

[http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/09/04/loopt-att- work-399mo...](http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/09/04/loopt-att- work-399month-location-updates-deal-iphone/)

<comment><USER3> I imagine this also generates some revenue for Loopt as well. I'd be surprised if AT&T took the entire thing.</comment></comment>