Ask HN: Is there something like a round trip "ping" for telephone? - <AUTHOR> Problem: The majority of the robo/spam calls I receive have a fake caller ID [1] so I can't block them based on originating location.<p>Question: Is there something analogous to internet network "ping" (but the the phone network) that could be used to determine approximately how far away the caller truly is? The idea would be to flag calls [2] that can't possibly be local yet have a "local" caller ID. Obviously, calls from cell phones can come from anywhere.<p>[1] Usually with the same 3 digits as mine i.e. (AAA) BBB-CCCC where AAA is area code, BBB is first 3 digits so they appear to be originating locally.<p>[2] Flagging might result in sending the call to voice mail or asking a question to test for human caller. <comment><USER2> Why not just use a whitelist and send all unknown callers to voicemail?

I swear that one of these days I will get around to creating such a system based on twilio. I swear.</comment>


Russia seeks to ban Jehovah's Witnesses - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/world/europe/russia-moves-to-ban-jehovahs-witnesses-as-extremist.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Just develop a trap, like a fly trap, they have similar intelligence!</comment>


Emperor Norton - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton <comment><USER2> Wow what a character, terrific find. I found this to be just amazing:

"Whoever after due and proper warning shall be heard to utter the abominable word "Frisco," which has no linguistic or other warrant, shall be deemed guilty of a High Misdemeanor, and shall pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of twenty-five dollars."

and:

"Norton was occasionally a visionary, and some of his Imperial Decrees exhibited profound foresight. He issued instructions to form a League of Nations, he explicitly forbade any form of conflict between religions or their sects, and he decreed the construction of a suspension bridge or tunnel connecting Oakland and San Francisco."

<comment><USER3> Odd that this made the front page of HN, but heck, let's roll with it.

A friend of a friend actually does very fun tours around SF as Emperor Norton. Amusing and informative.

[https://www.emperornortontour.com/index.html](https://www.emperornortontour.com/index.html)

<comment><USER4> I second this recommendation! We took the Emperor Norton tour a couple of years ago. It was great fun and we learned a lot of San Francisco history. You even get to go into one of the tunnels where they Shanghaied people. [1]

Since I had done my homework before taking the tour, we had a bit of fun at the beginning when the group met in Union Square. A dog went running by and the Emperor said, "Bummer, is that you?" I called out "Bummer, get Lazarus!" [2] [3]

The Emperor also offers a food tour in his modern disguise as Chef Joseph. Maybe we will take that one next! [4]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaiing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaiing)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bummer_and_Lazarus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bummer_and_Lazarus)

[3] [https://www.dogster.com/lifestyle/bummer-and-lazarus-san- fra...](https://www.dogster.com/lifestyle/bummer-and-lazarus-san-franciscos- legendary-dogs-emperor-norton)

[4] [http://www.sffoodsafari.com/index.html](http://www.sffoodsafari.com/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I first learned about the Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico from a charming little doorstopper called The Illuminatus! Trilogy. It was certainly an influential work for me as a young man. It goes to show that reality is far weirder and cooler than commonly thought.

<comment><USER6> Fnord

<comment><USER7> (I want you to know that I'm not downvoting you because this is a bad post, but rather, because I think this being greyed out would add excellently to the joke)

<comment><USER6> It would almost have been worth making a temporary account in the name of John Dillinger for the first post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I still think the new span of the Bay Bridge should have been named the Emperor Norton Memorial Bridge.

<comment><USER9> I always think of it as such when crossing it. There's at least one petition out there to officially name it that, which I think would be awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The best part is the general tolerance of the guy and the good humour it was taken in.

No outrage from the public or overreaction from the law over some harmless old guy making a symbolic gesture. The frontier sounded like my kind of people.

</comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of Pjotr Kraska, better known as 'the King of Zurich' (who died in 2016).

Unfortunately I can't find anything about him in English, but here's a link in German:

[https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/zuerich/stadt/der-koenig-von- zu...](https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/zuerich/stadt/der-koenig-von-zuerich-ist- tot/story/17996246)

A really interesting fellow. Obviously had some mental health issues but was tolerated (surprisingly and warmly by Swiss standards) by the public and officials.

</comment><comment><USER12> Ah, I'm glad to see this make it to HN. I first learned of Emperor Norton sometime back in the 00's when I was listening to music by Emperor Norton Records. I looked them up, and learned about Emperor Norton himself in the process. It's a very San Francisco story, to me. I love it.

</comment><comment><USER13> This guy needed Twitter.

Speaking of which, seems like there're probably folks like him around today.. anyone know of any?

</comment><comment><USER14> Also recently discussed on Stuff You Should Know podcast:

[https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/short-stuff- empe...](https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/short-stuff-emperor- norton.htm)

</comment><comment><USER15> I miss the record label. It signed all my favorite bands.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you are interested in historical absurdities of the American West such as Emperor Norton, I encourage you to check out the Clampers (ECV).

</comment><comment><USER17> I found out about him through The Sandmam by Neil Gaiman.</comment>


Introducing Google+ Events - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN7qw6UZZdg

<comment><AUTHOR> That video does not do much justice to the real thing, but this was one of the things G+ was missing compared to FB, and being an event manager myself, hoped to see.

At first sight it pretty much covers the same functionality as FB, and adds some more: extra information fields with purpose (eg. ticket seller's url, transit information), online events through Hangout, ....

If they have text formatting in the detail section, that feature alone would be a win, it's much more expressive than the plain text version on FB (there often people just don't see the information right in front of them because they skim , then keep asking).

Edit: It does have text formatting.

Also, here's some more info: <http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/events/></comment>


The Time Suck Economy - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2013/time-suck-economy-starting-building/

<comment><USER2> By Drew's standards, Hacker News is yet another time suck. I don't mean to be incendiary, but it's debatable whether knowledge of Aaron Swartz's death has any _actionable_ impact on my life.

I do agree with his thoughts on smartphones. While some smartphone apps are genuinely useful (e.g. workout apps, weather widgets, your smartphone's camera), there is a whole class of apps out there that facilitate mindless consumption. Every mobile game and social media app falls into this category.

Going off on a tangent, I haven't played a single, _good_ mobile game (i.e. one that isn't a mindless time waster). There isn't a single mobile game in existence that naturally ties in with the hardware, the way that trading Pokemon was a natural fit for the Game Boy. I really wish there were these types of experiences on smartphones, because Pokemon was a significant slice of culture.</comment>


LibreOffice 7.0 drops Adobe Flash support - <AUTHOR> https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/27/libreoffice-7-0-drops-adobe-flash-support/ <comment><USER2> LibreOffice supported Adobe Flash...?

<comment><USER3> Literally the second sentence of the article:

"Current versions of LibreOffice support Adobe Flash, more precisely the .SWF file format as users may export presentations and drawings to the format."

TLDR: LO 7 will not export to the .SWF file format.</comment></comment>


Tell HN: New Uber user, Saturday night surge $200 to get home - <AUTHOR> I'm a new Uber user, and I've never had anything but praise for it.
Sat night however, out late in the city, need to drop my friend home and then back on to my house. I live in the suburbs so it's a long cab ride.  I've had a few drinks and fumble my way past the surge pricing notification on Uber.
Next morning, check the email from Uber to see how much it cost to get home.  I was expecting it to be quite alot - maybe $100.
$200 to get home on a Saturday night - ouch - I could have flown to a different city for a night out for that.
I don't blame Uber - they gave a super clear warning to me.  However my pure joy honeymoon with Uber is over. <comment><USER2> I guess Uber isn't good in every city and location. Maybe a good idea would be to research about the cheapest way you go back home after having a great night before you get drunk.

</comment><comment><USER3> So I like to look at it a different way, not to say $200 doesn't hurt either way.

But my thought is what would a DUI have cost me, or worse, what damage could I have done to someone else or their family. $200 feels wrong until I say damn, I am home safe, no one got hurt and yea it might suck a little but way cheaper then a lawyer or living with hurting someone else. Just a thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the same way.

Even at $200, getting home safe without talking to the police for any reason is a good outcome.

All I'm saying is Uber needs to be used with caution.

<comment><USER4> Forgot to mention in my other comment, but I always do a fare estimate before actually hailing the Uber to get some sense of what I'm up against.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> May or may not be relevant, but if I recall correctly, you can actually inquire with Uber whether or not your driver took the most optimal route, in which case they will refund you the difference.

</comment><comment><USER5> How much would it have cost you for a standard taxi?

<comment><AUTHOR> At a guess, maybe $120? I really don't know. It was 70km and 27 minutes.

<comment><USER6> Would have been able to find a taxi the moment you wanted it? Would you have trusted a random cab driver in your drunken stupor more than you trusted the Uber driver.

Note: I am not an Uber user.

<comment><USER7> From my experience in Sydney, Aus (the author didn't mention what city he was in), every time I use Uber I feel like an idiot standing on the street corner waiting for my Uber driver to arrive while streams of available cabs go by.

I've only used Uber 5 times, but I'm not convinced this is the problem they are solving. Not in this city anyway.

<comment><USER8> Interestingly I have the opposite experience in Melbourne, Aus. I used to stand/walk/chase down empty cabs trying to get home but none would stop or just say things like "not far enough" or "i'm not going that way". This was true even at cab ranks.

Now I stand waiting for an Uber for a few minutes and 1. it turns up 2. they never complain about distance or direction and 3. I get home safely.

I do however mostly avoid crazy surcharge periods.

<comment><USER9> _I used to stand /walk/chase down empty cabs trying to get home but none would stop_

Not sure about Australia, but in many parts of Europe it's uncommon stopping a cab by waving your hand while standing by the street. Some even charge higher fees if used this way. A common way is to order it by phone or app and wait for notification that it has arrived.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft Says Its Bid for TikTok Was Rejected in U.S.-China Standoff - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/technology/tiktok-microsoft-oracle-bytedance.html <comment><USER2> Oracle purchasing a stake in ByteDance, and maybe handling US operations? It sounds like one of those deals which will end up as a loss in a few years and a write-down. The first comparison that comes to mind is the Tumblr sale, when Yahoo wrote-down $712 million, although the companies are quite different. However, the similarity is the culture difference between the parent and subsidiary companies - Yahoo couldn't figure out how to turn Tumblr profitable as they had no successful examples prior, as far as I remember. Oracle and TikTok could not be more different: Oracle is a cold cloud technology supplier with no business advertising to teens.

If Oracle wishes to only be the cloud partner holding US data (a possibility mentioned in the article) it's possible that it could work out, but whether it is possible is dependent on politics and potentially who is elected as the next President.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://archive.is/wqLyK](https://archive.is/wqLyK)</comment>


Ask HN: Recommendations of good cybercrime novels? - init-as I recently read American Kingping by Nick Bilton and I thought it was really good. It's about the founder of the Silk Road and how the FBI tracked him down.<p>Can you recommend any similiar novels? <comment><USER2> This isn't quite in the category, but John Carreyrou's nonfiction book "Bad Blood", which covered the rise and fall of Theranos, satisfied me in a similar way. There's plenty of crime, although it's really about pretending to be high-tech rather than actually being high tech. For people in tech who love a good fraud story, I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER3> Just finished this one and really enjoyed it. I will say, it would have been infuriating to read if I didn't already know the story ended with her takedown.

<comment><USER4> Spoiler alert?

<comment><USER5> Only if you have managed to ignore every major story about Theranos/Elizabeth for the last couple years...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _The Cuckoo 's Egg_, by Cliff Stoll.

<comment><USER7> Second this. Fantastic book about true events. If you like the story, there is also a movie which covers the same events as the book. The movie is called "23" and is available in German and English.

<comment><USER8> I know the movie as 'The KGB, the computer, and me': [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcKxaq1FTac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcKxaq1FTac)

<comment><USER9> Thanks for this, just started watching it now!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We Were Gods, by Alex Feinman. Among other things, it contains an amazing scene describing an attack on a race condition from inside a fantasy game's magic system.

Here's part of it:

Giggling a little from the alcohol, the four points began the slow juggling routine I'd sent them; just a simple ball passing, in rhythm. Pass, pass, pass. Throw and catch in the same instant; the balls went round and round until all four were landing in palms at the same time, four little smacks merging into one sound. Their avatars were better at this than they were. After a moment I threw another ball in, then another, until there were eight in the circle: four in the air, four in the hand. Faster and faster they went round, until there were little streaks of light behind them, until the streaks almost formed a complete, rippling circle.

Around us the world leaned in, currents of energy creating a field of magic potential. Rhythmic motion always attracted the attention of the underlying world routines as they struggled to incorporate it into the ebbs and flows of the wind and water; a vortex here, at one of the two hearts of the world, drew a lot of processing power. And each point of the cross was a magic-using engine; those strands of energy consumed a surprising amount of resources. But the real trick was the synchronization: slight imperfections in the coding routines for distribution and rationing of magical energy made them susceptible to a timing attack. It was a matter of chance, though; each time the circle tossed and caught, quanta of energy were requested at nearly- identical times. Sooner or later the system would try to service two at once and--ah.

One of the balls vanished momentarily, lost to accounting for a brief instant before the system found it again. It left a tiny kink in the circle of light as it passed: an opening, into the collection routines. This was what my watch-spell was waiting for: a chance to insert my own instructions into the information transmission stream: instructions that said 'open', 'open'.

[https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/396337](https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/396337)

</comment><comment><USER11> In a hard SF rather than contemporary context, _A Deepness in the Sky_ , by Vernor Vinge, is an absolute delight (and a Hugo winner for best novel). Vinge was a mathematics and computer science professor, and very much knows what he's talking about.

Part of the fun is that, on a 5000 year old spaceship set arbitrarily far in our future, long past the end of Moore's Law, all the systems are still running Unix. And one of the jobs on board is "Programmer-Archeologist", digging through generations of code to try to find useful bits from the past. But story-wise, there's some outstanding hacking ideas going.

<comment><USER12> Same author wrote _True Names_, which pre-dates the internet and yet nails a bunch of internet crime concepts (it's not about black ICE it's about someone doxing you, etc). Some sci-fi authors had a vision of the future, Vinge went on a 3 month vacation to the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Two books come to mind (while excluding the obvious absolute classics like Neuromancer (William Gibson) and Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson):

"Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. It goes from WW2 to modern time.

"Cyberpunk" by Katie Hafner - Read it aeons ago so working from long term memory. 3 real world stories of famous hackers and their "crimes" (Kevin Mitnick, Pengo, Robert Morris).

<comment><USER14> The last being one of the founders of ycombinator

<comment><USER13> Didn't know that...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Countdown to Zero Day by Kim Zetter.

It talks about the Stuxnet and the story behind it, and I got the chance to learn some fairly interesting stuff in the meantime (like the complexity of building a nuclear bomb).

I found it much more useful than the American Kingpin, which just _mentions_ that Tor and Bitcoin offer anonymity online, but doesn't get anywhere even close to explaining either of the technologies that are crucial for the storyline.

We Are Anonymous by Parmy Olson also made me feel kind of the same, but the writing wasn't quite as engaging as the Countdown to Zero Day was.

<comment><USER16> Sanger's Confront and Conceal has a great chapter on Stuxnet / Olympic Games as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ghost in the Wire by Kevin Mitnick.

I can't believe no one recommended this. The guy literally evaded the FBI using technology.

<comment><USER18> And I don't know if someone helped him write the book, but the story is amazingly good. It is exactly what you look for in a hacking story, someone outwitting people combined will some phone phreaking. Very good book, I would recommend.

<comment><USER19> Can't upvote this comment enough. Incredible story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "git commit murder" is a story in the style of a detective novel set at a BSD convention. Not sure if it counts as "cybercrime" because it's about a murder but of course the motive and circumstances only make sense in terms of the internal politics of a fictional BSD distribution. It's also a really authentic description of what it's like to be at a technical conference as a newcomer where you don't know anyone.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Stealing the network" series by Ryan Russel is awesome.

      - Stealing the Network: How to Own the Box
      - Stealing the Network: How to Own a Continent
      - Stealing the Network: How to Own an Identity
      - Stealing the Network: How to Own a Shadow

<comment><USER22> Came here to make sure someone mentioned these. Might not qualify as _great_ fiction imnho - but the technical detail more than makes up for it. And the books _are_ entertaining.

I see people's mentioned Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" \- while I loved "diamond age" and like "snowcrash" \- I much prefer Singh's "the codebook" on a similar theme. Thrilling non-fiction.

On the more fiction side, I enjoyed Bruce Sterling's "The Zenith Angle" a lot.

And second the recommendations for Mitnick's books - both the autobiography "ghost in the wires" and the more free form "made up examples" in "the art of deception" (like many of the stories in the stealing the network books, "inspired" by true events...).

Other than that there's of course: [https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/](https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/)

(and to a lesser extent "homeland").

And others mentioned the non-fiction book detailing operation sun devil:

"THE HACKER CRACKDOWN Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier", Bruce Sterling

[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101)

[ed: I think maybe "Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge deserves a mention too. And maybe "speed of Dark" by Elizabeth Moon]

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Reamde_ , by Neal Stephenson.

Yeah, the big daddy of cyberpunk ("Snowcrash") also wrote a contemporary technothriller set in organized cybercrime organizations.

<comment><USER24> I'm a big Stephenson fan, and I thought Reamde was terrible.

His usual quirky pacing just turns into a dragging nightmare that never pays off, it's uncharacteristically full of questionable technical premises, and if it weren't for a few islands of genuinely entertaining scenes I would not have made it through.

I honestly believe it's the result of some suit pressuring him to write about topics people see on Dateline

<comment><USER25> It definitely dragged on, but overall I thought it was enjoyable. He definitely kept building up to climaxes throughout the whole book - on an airplane, I kept sadly checking the percentage read because I was sure I was almost done with it, only to discover that I was only 30%, 50%, 70% along...

If you're a Stephenson fan, I would absolutely give this a read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The Defcon book list ("peek behind the curtain" and "underground culture") is a good starting place, [https://www.defcon.org/html/links/book- list.html](https://www.defcon.org/html/links/book-list.html)

<comment><USER27> All my recommendations happen to be mentioned on this list, so I'll mention them here:

\- Stealing the Network, a collection of short stories. One of those stories was written by Fyodor of nmap and is available online: [http://insecure.org/stc/](http://insecure.org/stc/) \-- this sort of works like a tutorial for nmap and networking security. :-D

\- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

\- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

\- Neuromancer by William Gibson

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Lock In by John Scalzi.

[https://www.tor.com/2014/05/21/lock-in-john-scalzi- excerpt-c...](https://www.tor.com/2014/05/21/lock-in-john-scalzi-excerpt- chapter-1/)

Wil Wheaton's narration is great too. I listened to the audiobook and think about it a lot.

It's a techno whodunit — hacking and cracking neural dust/lace, remotely renting and operating physical bodies and committing crimes while "occupying" them, and bio/techno ethics all play a role.

In Scalzi's future, locked-in patients receive so much government funding to improve their lives that they gain more abilities and advantages than those who aren't "locked in", which makes for an interesting inversion.

<comment><USER29> I would throw in the sequel "Head on". Same universe - just some time later. The audiobook is also narrated by Wil Wheaton. And it is great as always.

Offtopic. I would blindly recommend all books in the combination Wheaton narrating Scalzi. But esp. "The Collapsing Empire" (I can't wait for the next part to be released in October).

</comment></comment><comment> gm-conspiracy Cory Doctorow's _Little Brother_. I could not put it down, and read it in one sitting.

<comment><USER30> In the spirit of the fact that a few of these book suggestions have been made available online for free, I feel obligated to point out that Cory Doctorow has chosen to make both _Little Brother_ and _Homeland_ (the sequel to _Little Brother_ , mentioned by another commenter) available in a few different formats on his website. [1] [2]

[1] [https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/](https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/)

[2] [https://craphound.com/homeland/download/](https://craphound.com/homeland/download/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Daemon" or "Kill Decision" by Daniel Suarez

"Snow Crash" by Neil Stephenson

<comment><USER32> I'll second _Daemon_. It's a really good novel.

<comment><USER33> If you read Daemon, you really need to read FreedmonTM. It's a direct sequel, and almost has a hopeful vision of the future where Daemon has a dismal vision.

<comment><USER32> I've wondered about whether there was a sequel, given how _Daemon_ ends.

<comment><USER33> Honestly, I feel like the story is incomplete without the sequel. It made the whole idea even better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Bruce Sterling's _The Hacker Crackdown_ (nonfiction, now freeware). Lots of important early hacker history and run-ins with the authorities, plus the origin story of the EFF.

</comment><comment><USER35> Similar title, different book:

Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground by Kevin Poulsen ISBN-978-0307588692

The story of how credit card hacker Max Butler was caught by the FBI.

<comment><USER36> Late reply to say I immensely enjoyed this book. Highly recommended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Halting State by Charlie Stross

<comment><USER38> As others have said, also its sequel Rule 34. It's been a while since I read these, but I don't recall anything in there that jumped out at me as "you can't get there from here."

There was originally supposed to be a third novel in this series, but Stross cancelled it[0] after Edward Snowden.

 _" Halting State" wasn't intended to be predictive when I started writing it in 2006. Trouble is, about the only parts that haven't happened yet are Scottish Independence and the use of actual quantum computers for cracking public key encryption (and there's a big fat question mark over the latter—what else are the NSA up to?).

I'm throwing in the towel. I probably will write another near-future Scottish police procedural by and by, but it won't be a sequel to the first two except in the loosest sense. The science fictional universe of "Halting State" and "Rule 34" is teetering on the edge of turning into reality. Meanwhile, the financial crisis of 2007 forced me back to the drawing board for "Rule 34"; the Snowden revelations have systematically trashed all my ideas for the third book._

[0] [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/psa- why-...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/psa-why-there- wont-be-a-third-.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "The Right to Read" by Richard Stallman[1] is certainly not a novel, but it is a short bit of fiction about cybercrime (or rather, what would happen if certain day-to-day developer activities were made criminal) and is certainly worth the <20 minutes that it takes to read.

I seem to recall that it received a bit of hysterical "oh that could never happen" reaction when it was released but I can't seem to find a source for that recollection. It may have mostly been a reaction that was generated by the somewhat emotive backlash that tends to appear whenever Stallman makes a statement about "freedom" though, and the story certainly is allegorical, so anyone who disagreed with him may have posted about it online and skewed the discussion in that direction. I can't recall much about the specific reaction at the time (it was more than 10 years ago now) though so much of the above is really just poorly-informed speculation on my part.

It is, unfortunately, disappointingly prescient and it's something that I think everyone working in the tech industry should read, regardless of whether they think they agree with RMS's views on software freedom and intellectual property.

[1] [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to- read.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

Edit: I just re-read it and my initial estimate of "<20 minutes" was way off. I had forgotten just how short the story actually was, so perhaps my recollection about the reaction to the allegory isn't entirely accurate either. Nonetheless, I'm leaving this comment here as witness to the fallibility of my memory.

</comment><comment><USER39> "Hard-boiled Wonderland and end of the world" by Murakami. Not exactly a cybercrime novel. But I find the novel to be resonant with SF/cyberpunk subculture and an engrossing read too.

</comment><comment><USER40> Try Daemon and Freedom™ by Daniel Suarez.

<comment><USER41> Daemon was virtually unreadable.

It's a hacker-themed fairtale for computer illiterate, basically. I had a non- techy friend borrow the book and they too couldn't finish it, because it was just way over acceptable believability limits even for them.

<comment><USER42> Ohh man, for me it was EXACTLY the opposite. Daemon was one of the finest examples of a book in the cybercrime genre. It was one of those "Black Mirror" style entertainment: Take known tech and push it towards dystopia style stories. Daemon was was super-fun, and absolutely un-putdownable (Literally read it in a single sitting IIRC).

Almost all the tech (Self driving cars, distributed systems, daemons that can self replicate (viruses), collaborative systems, a Darknet all exist in some form or the other today! Is it fantasy? Duh!

Is it a fun read for someone who works building these exact systems fora living? Definitely!

<comment> anon-anon Completely agree. Everything is possible in it. If there was indeed someone who had a far surpassed genius level of IQ and tech know how, and dedicated hours of their time to developing the stuff with an unlimited budget (which basically is what Matthew Sobol supposedly has) then I could easily understand how a lot of things in that book could become reality.

Either way - a fun read and a good book to re-visit. One of the few that I read every few years or so...

<comment><USER25> Looking back on it now, I think the one thing that's really _not_ plausible is the idea that someone could write a system that can anticipate _anything_ that can happen. It was a little too Foundation/Psychohistory for me.

But it was still a fantastic novel, I loved reading it, and will probably re- read it again and again.

<comment><USER43> Did you read Freedom(TM)? It's a "sequel" but is really the second half of the novel. Addresses your critique in a very interesting way.

<comment><USER25> I did, yup. I was actually super mad at Daemon; I always try to get people to get both at once, to avoid the cliffhanger.

I don't think it address it _enough_ ; it made it more plausible by admitting that it can't be completely autonomous, but I'm not entirely sold. Having said that, I still love the series, much like I love any fantasy novel :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Mark Russinovich's Jeff Aiken Trilogy. If you're looking for a quality bestseller similar to Dan Brown books.

Zero day, Trojan Horse and Rogue Code are all excellent novels. Some common themes include computer virus epidemics, cyber armies, cyber warfare, dangers of an overnetworked but undersecured society

<comment><USER45> Second this suggestion. As others have noted his books probably aren't going to win any literary awards, but they are fun entertaining reads. There are some similarities in subject matter to some of Dan Brown's books, but Russinovich is a former Microsoft employee (and iirc he wrote the sys intervals suite of tools) so his are much more technically detailed, and accurate then what you would find in Dan Brown.

</comment></comment><comment> GuB-42 Takedown by Tsutomo Shimomura

That's the story of how Kevin Mitnick got caught. Very controversial so I can't say it's good. I still enjoyed it back then.

Note that the question is about novels, and I think it is how you should read the book. I seriously doubt its credibility when it comes to facts.

<comment><USER46> I never understood the fame of mitnick. He was a loser and not very talented. He is the equivalent of a Kardashian for fame

Kevin Paulson at least had some actual skills.

<comment><USER47> Read his book, if you haven't yet. He's honest, likable guy, always curious (and hungry) to live. He wouldn't have scored high in a coding competition, but it makes his accomplishments only more impressive.

Being "talented" and "winning" looks like a railroad track, interesting life is worth more imho

<comment><USER46> I've read it. I believe he smashed the detective in the face with a garbage can lid to escape. Not exactly very likeable.

Also he literally lied to a ton of people to gain access to systems. So not very honest

<comment><USER47> I need a reality check sometimes. As a Russian, I naturally look at abusing cops or lying to phone company clerks as a good thing, but it's obviously my national deformation.

However, he is honest to his readers, which is the best honesty we could ask for from a book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> On the topic of Non-fiction cybercrime books, one that provides very good insight imho on the history of spam albeit a little hard to follow is "Spam Nation", by Brian Krebs

<comment><USER49> "Spam Kings" isn't bad either. A bit dated, but it's a good history of one of the earlier spam operations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Not a book, but Person of Interest is a _very good_ serial about cyber stuff & IA. Plus, more of the thing the team do is cyber-crime or gray-hacking.

</comment><comment><USER51> Citing Wikipedia: "Blackout: Tomorrow Will Be Too Late" is a disaster thriller book by the Austrian author Marc Elsberg, described by Penguin Books as "a 21st-century high-concept disaster thriller".

The novel is about a European power outage due to a cyberattack. For realism the book is written on the basis of interviews with intelligence and computer security officials.

<comment><USER52> I read it some weeks ago and can definitely recommend it. It was a departing gift from my university, a very fitting one for computer science students if you ask me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Recently I enjoyed [https://www.amazon.com/Strength-Numbers-Cryptocurrency- Bill-...](https://www.amazon.com/Strength-Numbers-Cryptocurrency-Bill- Laboon/dp/1981526730/)

Basically a novel about a couple of college students who find some lost bitcoin in the near future, and the drama that ensues.

I thought the book was super interesting.

</comment><comment><USER54> Computer Crimes and Capers

Edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg & Charles G. Waugh

Publication date 1983

Table of Contents:

        Introduction -- crime up to date      Isaac Asimov
        DARL I LUV U                          Joe Gores
        An end of spinach                     Stan Dryer
        Computers don't argue                 Gordon R. Dickson
        Goldbrick                             Edward Wellen
        Computer cops                         Edward D. Hoch
        Sam Hall                              Poul Anderson
        Spanner in the works                  J.T. McIntosh
        While-you-wait                        Edward Wellen
        Getting across                        Robert Silverberg
        All the troubles of the world         Isaac Asimov

Borrow for 14 days on Archive.org:

[https://archive.org/details/computercrimesca00asim](https://archive.org/details/computercrimesca00asim)

</comment><comment><USER55> "Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace" is a true crime story covering the late 80s/early 90s era of hacking in the US, and a conflict[0] between two prominent hacker groups of the time - LOD[1] and MOD[2] - <AUTHOR> mostly consisted of smart teenage kids who were just obsessed with computers and telephone networks. It's unquestionably one of my favourite books.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hacker_War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Hacker_War)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_Doom_(hacking)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_Doom_\(hacking\))

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Deception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Deception)

</comment><comment><USER56> You said "novels", so I'm assuming you're looking for fiction. If that's the case I enjoyed Jon Evans' "Swarm": [http://m.feedbooks.com/userbook/24466/swarm](http://m.feedbooks.com/userbook/24466/swarm)

<comment> init-as I just assumed that a lot of them would be novels. If you have any recommendations for real-life stuff I'd love that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> OP asked about _novels_. Here are a few excellent novels in this genre which I highly recommend:

 _Soda Pop Solider_ by Nick Cole

 _Ctrl-Alt-Revolt_ by Nick Cole

 _Glasshouse_ by Charles Stross

Second the Vernor Vinge recommendations, and the Neal Stephenson and William Gibson Sprawl Trilogy recommendations.

Gibson's _The Peripheral_ , as well as _Pattern Recognition_ , _Zero History_ , and _Spook Country_ all apply, as well. Same for his _Idoru_ , _Virtual Light_ , and _All Tomorrow 's Parties_.

Finally, Gibson and Sterling's _The Difference Engine_ \- the first and, so far, best steampunk novel - also qualifies, given the storyline.

</comment><comment><USER58> I would recommend "Underground", a text-only e-book about (perhaps even by?) Kevin Mitnick, how the entire hacker scene got started, and through the cat- and-mouse game that led to Mitnick's eventual arrest.

Unfortunately, I cannot find a link to this work; although I did find uncountable similar books and movies on the topic.

Perhaps this will suffice as a teaser? "Catching Kevin" at Wired: [https://www.wired.com/1996/02/catching/](https://www.wired.com/1996/02/catching/)

<comment><USER30> I'm not sure which specific Kevin Mitnick book you're actually referring to or looking for but the book "Underground" is actually by Suelette Dreyfus and is about the nascent hacker/cracker subculture of the late '80s and early '90s. It was researched by/with Julian Assange (not written by him as another commenter has stated) who is known in the book as "Mendax". [1]

Interestingly, the book was released for free online in 2001, at the suggestion of Julian Assange, and the author credits this online release for expanding both the quantity and range of different people that would end up reading the book. [2]

The book can be read online (in HTML) at [2] or various ebook formats can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg at [3].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_(Dreyfus_book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_\(Dreyfus_book\))

[2] [https://suelette.home.xs4all.nl/underground/justin/preface.h...](https://suelette.home.xs4all.nl/underground/justin/preface.html)

[3] [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4686](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4686)

<comment><USER58> Yes, this must be it. Thank you (and other commenters!) for the added references.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I want to add "The Watchmen" by Jonathan Littman. It's the story of Kevin Poulsen. It's very well written and I personally liked it better than all the Mitnick stories, but they are certainly comparable. It's been a while since I've last read it, but I think about it with a bit of nostalgia, as there are all those phone phreaking and dumpster diving stories in it, when nobody cared about security.

</comment><comment><USER60> Marcin Przybylek wrote a series of books called "Gamedec". The first book is a collection of short stories. Detective crime stories all involving games. Permadeth. Pvp. Hacks and cheats. Kidnappings. Augmentations. Etc. The second book is still much a detective story but it is now one longer book, not a collection of stories.

Afterwards gamedec series changes style and pace, still okay but no longer detective work.

</comment><comment><USER61> Spam Nation by Brian Krebs is excellent. It delves deep into the email spam scene, and covers some big events and the people around it. He talks to users which buy stuff they are advertised in spam emails, and looks into the quality of the products advertised (are the viagra pills safe?).

The book is not very technical, and he never digs deeper into the details than what is necessary.

</comment><comment><USER62> I think you will enjoy Kingpin by Kevin Poulsen.

<comment><USER63> Came here to say this. Great book. Not a novel, but still worthy of a mention. It definitely reads like one with the pacing and writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Darknet by Matthew Mather About an AI entity taking over the financial market and buying its way into the political system.

</comment><comment><USER65> if you like books that combine fiction and technical detail, I can thoroughly recommend the "stealing the network" series. It has an intriguing overarching plot and the details are all accurate and technical-minded - the best comparison I can give is it's like "The Martian" but for cybersecurity.

</comment><comment><USER66> Black Edge is on one the largest insider trading cases ever prosecuted. There was no real hacking or advanced cyber crime (maybe just some social engineering) but was an interesting case of how some bad hedge funds operate.

There are some great books on this thread! I've read a bunch of them and going to come back for more.

</comment><comment><USER67> The Gibson Vaughn series by Matthew FitzSimmons. It isn't purely cybercrime but the protagonist is a hacker. As a cybersec pro who runs bug bounty programs and red teams, I felt all of the tech was on point without taking away from the stories.

</comment><comment><USER68> Not a novel, but super interesting story about how the Feds caught Russian Mega-Carder Roman Seleznev: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Chp12sEnWk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Chp12sEnWk)

</comment><comment><USER69> Kill Process by William Hertling

<comment><USER70> The only one I've read in this genre. It was quite enjoyable, and if my memory is correct quite technically plausible. Interesting themes about tech gigants and their influence/power, and some tragic stuff about wife/women abuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> The Atavist's "Mastermind" series re: Paul Le Roux - [https://magazine.atavist.com/the- mastermind](https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind)

</comment><comment><USER72> If cybercrime interests you, you might like the "Malicious Life" podcast: [http://malicious.life/](http://malicious.life/)

Not a novel though.

</comment><comment><USER73> The blue nowhere is one that I hugely enjoyed. Also Kevin Mitnick's "ghost in the wire". I read that one after kingpin and enjoyed it more, but it is in a similar trend :)

</comment><comment><USER74> Future Crimes a non-fiction about cybercrime of past and future [http://www.futurecrimesbook.com](http://www.futurecrimesbook.com)

</comment><comment><USER75> We all know that novels are by definition fiction, right?

</comment><comment><USER76> not really a cybercrime novel, but really interesting for people in that business i'd say. Spy Catcher. That is written by someone in high position of MI:5 and their first 'science' officer. a lot of interesting information about spying which later really kickstarted cyber espionage / crime in a way...

<comment><USER77> ...and in a related vein, anyone with a hacker mindset ought to check out R.V. Jones' 'Most Secret War'; Jones was the UK senior scientific adviser during WW2 and the book reads like an endless string of anecdotes about one-upping the Germans.

I guess tricking early IFF and radionavigation systems could be considered cyber crime - today, at least, he'd get the DMCA thrown at him for his trouble. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Out of the Inner Circle (1985) - the autobiographical true story of "The Cracker" Bill Landreth.

</comment><comment><USER79> Exploding The Phone covers phone phreaking and the phone company investigations into it.

</comment><comment><USER80> The Cuckoo's Egg true story

</comment><comment><USER81> darknet is exciting and well grounded technically. also cyberstorm by same author.

</comment><comment><USER82> Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. I read it 5 years ago. Recommend it

</comment><comment><USER83> Rick Dakan's "Geek Mafia" trilogy

</comment><comment><USER84> "Fatal System Error" by Joseph Menn

</comment><comment><USER85> Littman's books on Mitnick and Poulsen.

</comment><comment><USER86> Ghost in the wires by Kevin Mitnick.

</comment><comment><USER87> Future Crimes by Marc Goodman

a good book from Goodman

</comment><comment><USER19> Ghost in the Wires - Kevin Mitnick

</comment><comment><USER88> The Quantum Spy by David Ignatius

</comment><comment><USER89> Daemon by Daniel Suarez

</comment><comment><USER90> Terminal Compromise</comment>


Why did we redesign Thunderbird? - <AUTHOR> http://monterail.com/blog/2016/the-power-of-email-clients-why-did-we-redesign-thunderbird/?utm_campaign=Thunderbird&utm_medium=social&utm_source=hackernews <comment><USER2> > Currently, Thunderbird faces the problem of simultaneously showing a vast > amount of information on one screen and we hope we addressed that.

> Whole work was focused on adding some white space, inserting new typography > an equalizing colors, but still keeping in mind branding and character of > Thunderbird. That's why the redesign was based on FirefoxOs Style Guide to > keep its identity somehow coherent.

Please keep options open. I really don't understand why people prefer it that way. In the world of small screen laptops, vertical space of screen is very precious to me. I use 11' macbook air on the go and I always have preferred the most compact one line layout. Google also recognizes this and has given three different types of layouts.

It isn't just small screen, but some people prefer and are used to seeing lot of information at once. I am one of them. I am not favoring toolbar or side layouts, I always keep them disable and access everything through keyboard shortcuts. But my requirements are:

1\. maximum number of emails on screen at once in one line, no preview pane

2\. all email account's folder with highlighted unread emails

I am glad someone is picking up this project, but please keep options open.

</comment><comment><USER3> I for one very much dislike the three column design. If you're like me and try to maintain "Inbox Zero", and archive everything useless or not requiring a reply in the immediate future, then a UI like this is wasted as there ends up being a very empty column in the centre.

Further, in tiling setups (tiling WM or just having more than one full-screen window open at once on one screen), this approach is even more wasteful, as you may not have 100% of your screen width to accommodate such a UI. TI get that people want more and more of their interfaces to be consistent with the "simple" mobile app design from the last 2-5 years, however I can't help but feel that the re-design provided by the article is more suited for people with vastly different email usages. As another comment has said, keep options open.

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks absolutely wonderful.

However, Thunderbird seems to be stuck in a development limbo... I legitimately wish that the 'Mozilla Core' approach like they originally created Thunderbird from either needs to be done again from Firefox once proper multi-process via Electrolysis is enabled in mainline, or for them to simply clean-slate a new mail client.

I remain skeptical though, as there simply isn't the resources or interest to pour into Thunderbird as they had when it was first created.

<comment><USER5> Mozilla certainly has the resources to "pour into Thunderbird" to make it even better.

Unfortunately, they instead prefer to devote those resources towards other projects for a couple of years, before then "giving up" on those projects and finding something new to pour their resources into.

With just one or two full-time developers, Thunderbird could be an absolutely awesome e-mail client. I already think it's pretty decent and I use it every day and, unless I'm not seeing something, I don't think there's any need to constantly introduce new features into it. E-mail doesn't really change all that much so it would mostly be maintenance and support, fixing bugs, etc., instead of constantly pumping out new versions with "killer features".

What would Thunderbird be like today if a fraction of the resources devoted to Personas, Hello, Firefox OS, and so on had instead been put towards Thunderbird?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Its worth mentioning that PostBox is a fork of Thunderbird.

<comment><USER7> Postbox is great. I do wish it would minimize to the menubar instead of the dock with OSX -- but this is a common request for OSX mail clients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks nice, Thunderbird was certainly looking incredibly dated last time I used it, but the reason I ultimately gave up on it was performance. Once you have a massive amount of email it can be unpredictable and sluggish.

<comment><USER9> I find Thunderbird unusable unless I turn off indexing. Once I do that I find it compares well to alternatives.

I have standardised on a 13" screen and I remove as much of the Thunderbird interface as I can. I can conceive of a UX redesign making it more useful but it wouldn't look like anything in this article. I don't care how pretty it looks. It is a list of folders, emails and messages not a painting.</comment></comment>


Job hunting is a matter of Big Data, not how you perform at an interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/10/job-hunting-big-data-interview-algorithms-employees <comment><USER2> Best quote from the entire article imho:

> The data suggested that the success of teams had much less to do with > experience, education, gender balance, or even personality types; it was > closely correlated with a single factor: "Does everybody talk to each > other?"

> Ideally this talk was in animated short bursts indicating listening, > involvement and trust – long speeches generally correlated with unsuccessful > outcomes. For creative groups such as drug discovery teams or for traders at > financial institutions, say, the other overwhelming factor determining > success was: do they also talk to a lot of people outside their group? "What > we call 'engagement' and 'exploration' appeared to be about 40% of the > explanation of the difference between a low-performing group and a high- > performing group across all the studies," Pentland says.

> It was important that a good deal of engagement happened outside formal > meetings. From this data, Pentland extrapolates a series of observations on > everything from patterns of home-working (not generally a good idea) to > office design (open and collegiate) to leadership. "If you create a highly > energetic environment where people want to talk to each other right across > the organisation then you have pretty much done your job right there."

So true.

<comment><USER3> The article didn't make clear though, whether having more engaging conversations actually _causes_ team success. If a team is successful, that may boosts morale and lead to increased levels of conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's been known for a long time that standard interviews are a poor indicator of future job performance, so probably any analyses of data regarding behavioural modes, a person's intrinsic motivators, cultural fit etc, will do a slightly better job. Presumably all of this will still be subordinate to an on-the-job trial anyway, though.

It'd worry me that, although this guy says you need to increase behavioural diversity but minimise value diversity, that you're effectively just minimising the pool of potential employees, rather than figuring out ways that a larger pool of people could fit. Or in other words, whether it's Myers- Briggs, Belbin's roles, IQ tests etc, it seems that evaluation tools are trying to quantify the diversity of people, and pick off, with increasing accuracy, the exact archetype that aligns with organisational goals. But if you assume that people are diverse, and that employment roles are diverse, and that there's a large pool of both, would it not be a better idea to focus on quantifying the differences in attributes required for your employment roles, so as to maximise your pool of potential applicants?

I'm willing to bet that someone who's slobbish and lazy and unpleasant could play a valuable role if you could quantify the requirements and goals of positions in your company, for example. And does value alignment matter for all roles in all companies, or is it just a phenomenon arising in the last decade, being an intuitive way to maximise employee investment and increase profit? Why would financial staff need to want to 'change the world' or some bullshit to work at crappy Startup X?

<comment><USER5> I'm not a regular interviewer but I've been on a panel for a few recently. For one job in particular the standout candidate on paper gave the worst interview I have ever seen.

He was arrogant, confrontational, couldn't answer simple questions and was half an hour late - and not apologetic at all. He was just weirdly and inexplicably unpleasant to everyone.

Perhaps he would have been great in some role or would have aced a psychological test .. but I'm glad we did an interview so we could reject him out of hand.

I'm sure there is a place for widespread empirical evaluations .. but ultimately if you are employing someone to work with you there has to be space to say: "Err, No! - I don't care what the computer says".

<comment><USER6> Or he took one look at the place, decided he (or she) did not want the job and tanked the interview.

<comment><USER5> We're all lovely people and we served nice coffee and delicious biscuits.

<comment><USER7> eww, biscuits!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now any analysis applied to a data set is now "Big Data." While easy to just resolve it to being how the media treats most science stories, I had hard time understanding the demarcation. I now go by DevOps Borat's definition - "any thing which crash Excel" [1]

[1] [https://twitter.com/DEVOPS_BORAT/status/288698056470315008](https://twitter.com/DEVOPS_BORAT/status/288698056470315008)

<comment><USER9> It's worse than that. People will run Hadoop on 20 nodes to do stuff Excel could handle easily, so they can join the "big data" fun. It's just CV-padding really, ironic given the discussion.

<comment><USER10> [https://twitter.com/Lumonade/status/289171814444331008](https://twitter.com/Lumonade/status/289171814444331008)

"@DEVOPS_BORAT got heavy duty @dev ops gig available in San Mateo,ca and Seattle area! $130-$140+k doe email me email@example.com"

does this mean it works?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm suspicious of this technology. While I concede that it probably has some statistical and even empirical merit, those in HR will always do everything they can to make sure that "troublemakers and journeymen" get kept out. But unfortunately, most people who have had the same job for a long time are either just trying to pay their mortgage and smiling through gritted teeth long enough to see their kids alright or have no imagination/ambition and those who switch jobs regularly are often simply tired of taking shit from people. I think you'll find that "troublemakers" usually have tried to alert their line managers to the real flaws in the company's systems and been told to shut up. Look at the businesses this data is being taken from, Law Companies, Corporate Banks etc. It is obviously yet another toy to allow rich kids to recognise their own. What has this got to do with those who do the vast majority of the actual work?

</comment><comment><USER12> This is exactly the sort of thing that I have been absolutely terrified about for a while now. When you're being hired, companies often tell you that they're going to run a professional background check, and I am concerned this may mean they buy data from Google, Facebook, cell carriers, etc.

Unsavory political views? Get blacklisted.

Don't get along with a relative? Get blacklisted.

Indulge a porn habit more than the HR manager likes? Get blacklisted.

I cannot stress enough how dangerous this is.

<comment><USER13> I think this is cynical and forgets the reality of competition. In this 'big data hiring' future companies still need to compete for talent. Companies which hire on the basis of arbitrary factors like political views, porn habits, family infighting risk losing talent to competitors. There are incentives to find the right factors of a good employee, just like there are today. In fact a lot of these concerns can happen with the human interview process today.

The algorithm to hire people in this future is a competitive asset of a company and they would spend lots of time & money to narrow down the actual important factors. I highly doubt companies would just all settle on the same algorithm given the incentives to compete.

Also if you are concerned about this info impacting employment, just don't post it online. Not much different than today.

<comment><USER14> > In this 'big data hiring' future companies still need to compete for talent. > Companies which hire on the basis of arbitrary factors like political views, > porn habits, family infighting risk losing talent to competitors.

Yes, but you forget the old banking maxim: it is better to fail conventionally than it is to succeed unconventionally. I think it's very likely that hiring managers would pass up the potential increased talent of an employee if that talent came coupled with increased risk that the employee would do something to embarrass the company or do something to make the company look bad.

>Also if you are concerned about this info impacting employment, just don't post it online.

So what do I do when the lack of online information about me in itself becomes a drawback?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is obvious up trending of terms like 'big data', 'predictive analytics' and 'data mining'. I have worked in this area since 1998. So here are a few thoughts:

\- Good analytics (I'll combine the three terms into 'analytics' for the sake of simplicity) requires an understanding of the tools, as well as a significant understanding of statistics so that you know which analysis to pick. But in addition, it requires a lot of creativity (see my examples below) and a significant amount of time to analyze/slice/dice data in a zillion different ways.

\- This is a huge opportunity. Much, much bigger than people realize and much bigger than past trends of new technologies like client-server in early nineties or web apps of 4-5 years back. Why? Because it has the power to affect business processes very powerfully.

\- Example 1: I spent 10 months working for a $5B shipping company analyzing data from their Marketing department. I combined it with several hundred global data sources. I worked on over 100 hypotheses. At the end of it, I came up three specific actions that their existing customers take about 6 months before going to a competitor. The Marketing department was thrilled. They spent $17 Million coming with a plan to tackle this. It has been a few months since then; and they have not lost a single customer. This is a powerful proprietary competitive weapon for them now.

\- Example 2: I analyzed 10 years of power meter reading data for a large utility company. I combined it publicly available data sources of power consumption of major appliances and census data on family composition/wealth for various neighborhoods. I was able to reliably predict the lifestyle of every family, down to whether the person living in the house streamed a movie on Friday evenings and a whole lot more. So the company decided to use this analysis to change their Direct Mailers with very specific, personalized offerings. Their response to the first test mailer sent to 10,000 people? Twenty seven percent!!! They predict that a significant portion of their profits would come from DM's.

<comment><USER16> I am ... stunned.

What level of sophistication did you have to reach in the shipping company case. Was it, hypothetically speaking, the client starts using more than one other alternative shipper (fairly low sophistication) or was it multi factor stuff at levels of statistical skill that you need a Phd to grasp?

And thank you - these one off comments are why HN is such a valuable place to contribute to.

<comment><USER15> It was very sophisticated analysis. But let me emphasize two things:

\- When you start, you are taking a leap into total emptiness. You explore a thousand different avenues, most of them are dead ends. Your day consists of massive amount of mental effort to stay focused, to stay sane, and to make good assumptions. Then you change tack/analyses continuously. You keep adding/deleting datasets. This is not theoretical statistics but sometimes you use arcane things; so you definitely need to be very strong at Stats. My personal dream is that one day, when I have time and money, I will use these methods to come up with a Meta- Statistics approach to empirical analysis -- i.e., to use Analytics to predict, based on the problem definition and available data sets, which methods to use.

\- You have to have patient clients. Jumping 10 months into a project with absolutely NO guarantee of success is a huge leap of faith, financially speaking; but the rewards can be huge. One day you are still nowhere, and literally the next day, everything clicks, you check your conclusions once- twice-thrice, make a presentation to the client, and, boom!, your project is over.

<comment><USER16> Thank you. This does sound like an entire industry waiting to exist rather than a clever one off.

So how are you planning to go from tenuous projects to repeatable revenue (sorry someone asked me some hard questions today - paying it forward!). I am guessing that a 5bn dollar shipping firm that just stopped multi-million clients walking out the door is getting some serious payback - even if your daily rate was enormous.

So what about things like multiple clients simultaneously (hiring interns), building a capability maturity matrix to help clients increase their data sophistication (and naturally you charge a monthly retainer)

Just interested in knowing where you are taking this.

<comment><USER15> No, no such thing for me. I like to be the independent, incorruptible voice. Besides, I would hate dealing with employees. Man's gotta know his limitations. :)

<comment><USER16> Enjoy your freedom :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Honestly, I think a good tech journalist should be able to critically review what his interview partner claims and not take it for face value, which the author of this article seems to do most of the time. Today, all start-ups that do any kind of data processing advertise themselves as "big data" companies that use "advanced machine learning", but from my own experience most of them rely on pretty trivial algorithms behind the scenes.

Also, some of the numbers in the article really make you scratch your head: Achieving more than 95 % accuracy when ranking a large number of student teams in an eight-months long business plan competition, based solely on the results of a simple online questionnaire taken at the beginning of the competition? This just seems too good to be true considering the data sources they have at hand, even assuming that they use the most advanced machine learning in the world.

Of course, if you test your algorithm many times at different competitions you will achieve a perfect or near-perfect prediction accuracy for some of them (by pure chance), which however doesn't mean that you can achieve this kind of accuracy consistently (which is where the business value lies).

<comment><USER18> "Achieving more than 95 % accuracy when ranking a large number of student teams in an eight-months long business plan competition, based solely on the results of a simple online questionnaire taken at the beginning of the competition? This just seems too good to be true."

My first thought exactly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A few months ago, I met the founder of a company in the recruiting business. They aggregate online profiles of people, both applicants and other people happily employed at their current jobs. Then, based on the combination of their LinkedIn, StackOverflow, Facebook, FourSquare etc, their algorithm ranks folks according to the desired characteristics for a given position.

It sounds interesting in theory. That is, until I got to asking about how they quantified softer qualities that employers look for, like an applicant's social skills or potential for a client facing role. Apparently, to determine this, they look at the number of "check ins" people do at locations that are not their home city while employed. Their algorithm assumes that the person is traveling for business and is therefore trusted to meet customers.

There are so many assumptions in this one example that it makes me question the integrity of the whole system. An algorithm is only as good as the person designing it. Maybe Evolv really is better than these guys at finding quantitative markers for softer skills, but I remain skeptical.

<comment><USER20> And what if you have 2/4 of those? Or have their privacy to max status? How do they account for those? Like you said, the algorithm is only as good as the writer.

<comment><USER19> Actually, I asked about that, since my privacy settings is at the max on Facebook and maybe I used FourSquare once? I also never anchor Facebook posts to a location.

His response was basically that they are "trusted partner" (quotes because I can't remember the exact term, but that sounds right) of Facebook and so they get all the data somehow. Maybe they pay for it? I am not sure how it would work because it couldn't be anonymized for their service.

Anyway, he basically said that, when you combine the Facebook location based posts and FourSquare checkins (and probably location anchored Tweets too as well as others I am missing), there are so many millions of these happening everyday that some of those people are bound to be qualified for the position a company is hiring for.

...Which brings us back to problematic assumptions. Garbage in, garbage out.

<comment><USER20> Well now, I was unaware FB was selling my data in this way. Looking back, it makes sense, but still, that's a little chilly to me.

But yes, you end up selecting people that:

1) Have smart-phones

2) Use them, and not have their kids mess with them

3)Use many of these services

4)Are not caught up in the SV non-compete bubble

5)Are good enough nonetheless

6)Are looking

This limits the use of this idea incredibly. Not to mention all the regular Federal issues of race, sex, creed, and orientation. If I were hiring, unless this were incredibly cheap, I'd stay far away from it. It's just plain creepy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As someone in the job market right now, I'm refreshed by the article's admission of how much chance plays a role in whether you land a job.

I'm currently working on my CV and there's about as much conflicting advice as to what the 'ideal CV' is as there is about what the ideal diet is. It's somewhat frustrating but at the same time it just shows the amount of chance and variation involved in the whole process.

At least in the industry I'm going for (games / Unity3D for what it's worth), actions & side-projects seem to speak louder than words.

</comment><comment><USER22> Today's Dilbert is forecasting where this new approach to staff efficiency is heading.

[http://www.dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000...](http://www.dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/200000/10000/6000/900/216903/216903.strip.sunday.gif)

</comment><comment><USER23> While I like the idea, I don't care for the side effects. If everyone uses a big data based algorithm, and you are an outlier, you will never get a job.

<comment><USER24> That would only be the case if everyone used the same algorithm with the same inputs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Probably this science is in it's infancy, and as data grows and algorithms are refined, it will go places we can scarcely imagine at the moment.

I can hardly wait for the day when a baby is born and "garbageman" or "engineer" is stamped on it's head and it becomes futile to argue with empirical truth about "best fit".

Actually, kidding aside I think companies and employees may both benefit from this research if it is applied properly. But if a better form of these tools were available to our current system it would likely produce some very bad effects. I think maybe we have some important decisions about humans and their role in society coming up soon. Because technology never seems to go back in the bottle.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love the reverse idea here - take an assessment test and then release that data out to the public - presumably as anonymised as possible.

Then folks can take the same test and see if they should run screaming from the interview

</comment><comment><USER25> I stopped at "collecting the data of all our private moves on the internet and applying their logarithms accordingly." Apparently programming is all about writing logarithms.

<comment><USER26> And your not worried about collecting private data about job applicants?

<comment><USER27> Seeing shady behaviour isn't a reason to stop reading. Seeing bullshit is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results" this expression should be used more often when data has a big human element attached to it.

</comment><comment><USER29> Another way for big companies to more accurately exploit their workforce under market-based conditions. If this software goes through, the only possible way to get a raise is if the program believes not getting a raise would actually cause you to quit. There's only one reliable way to make the program think that : make sure you actually would quit if you don't get it.

In other words: expect a massive increase in job hopping as people find the only possible way to negotiate with this program : quit.

> By morning, he says: "If a customer has thousands of people in similar job > types, our system can predict accurately on a given day which individuals > are most likely to quit." In response, Evolv then offers employers "what-if > types of analysis" by which if they change certain incentives – a bonus, > training scheme, change in environment – they can see exactly what effect it > is likely to have on a particular person's behaviour. In this way Evolv > advertises average reduced employee attrition rates among its clients, who > include one fifth of Fortune 100 companies, of up to 15%.

This sounds horrible. It would force employees into quit-to-improve-working conditions dynamics. Constantly interview, at a non-ridiculous rate. If you get offered better conditions, either Evolv will offer you the same at your current position, or you should quit.

Of course that's already mostly true : my advice working for a fortune 100 company that isn't Google or Facebook : prepare to quit after 1 year or less. Regardless of whether you want to stay or not, have a serious discussion with your boss about quitting after 6 months at most.

I wonder if it would defeat the negotiation tactic used by "Evolv" here. If you can call it a tactic, that is.

<comment><USER30> Once you have a sufficient percentage of a job market gated by these types of algorithms, the individual worker literally cannot win. Adversarial approaches to 'beating' the algorithm can be detected and compensated for within the algorithm. Ironically, it'll just be right back to forming unions, except you'll be negotiating against algorithms.

Seriously, almost any type of 'optimization' on the half of companies/employers right now is bad news for employees and job seekers. We call it optimization because its nice and clean. But the effect of every optimization is to squeeze out every last bit of productivity out of a given work force as possible.

Honestly, I hope this type of thing is never developed and deployed to the degree to which some of the proponents in the article wish it to. They can paint starry eyed pictures of a future where everyone gets to work the job that fits them the best, but all I can see is a future where everyone who has a job is scared shitless of losing it, since it'll blackmark them forever.

<comment><USER31> Thats a highly cynical view. There's plenty of optimization problems that aren't about squeezing out productivity at the cost of anyone, but rather about improving productivity and employee satisfaction at the same time.

For instance - lets say that I realise I have a problem with turnover that I want to fix, because my costs of replacing staff are too high. To address that I want to spend 1M on retention activities in a year. Should I spend that on additional vacation days, or should I spend that on extra events for the staff, or on extra training opportunities? If I spend that money, will the impact on my turnover costs be positive enough to warrant the spend?

That's the kind of discussions that always pop up. Being able to quantify the impact would make it easier to do the right thing that both benefits employees and the employer.

<comment><USER30> Oh, I agree that there are ways to improve productivity and employee satisfaction at the same time, and some companies might choose to do that.

But let's be real - there are likely more people that jobs that they are willing to do in the US for the short to medium term. As the 'jobless' recovery showed, companies were perfectly able to squeeze out additional 'productivity' (ok, I'll agree that the way we measure market performance isn't really that great, but it's the metrics that we largely agree to play the game by) while cutting labour force, and maybe even per-worker pay, and likely driving down employee satisfaction, other than how glad they were to still have a job.

As long as 'hey, look be glad that you have a job' is a legitimate threat, for the majority of workers, they're really out of luck, cause again, let's be real. The right thing that benefits both employees and the employer is not the same thing as the right thing that benefits both the employees plus the guy you just fired and the employer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> _Evolv data undermines certain truisms, among them the idea of the serial job- hopper. "The number of jobs you have previously had," Simkoff says, "and even whether you're employed or not at the time of application, has zero statistical correlation with how successful you will be or how long you will stay."_

The job-hopper stigma isn't about imputed low skill or merit. It's about social status. The person who is presently unemployed has (temporarily) low social status. The person with 5 jobs in 6 years, it is perceived, failed to achieve high social status at any of them.

The problem with humans is that most don't make decisions based on value-add potential, but on social status. They see Harvard on a resume and want to hire that person, to be socially "closer" to Harvard. It's not about whether Harvard graduates are better hires or not; that question is irrelevant.

Job-hopping might seem like it could be a high-status behavior, in that the best people get bored quickly and always have other opportunities, so they don't put up with abuse. After all, the serially fired job hoppers are maybe 1/10 of that set. It's not so, because the people who make hiring and promotion decisions are in corporate in-crowds, and part of being an in-crowd is the necessary assumption that _everyone_ wants to be in an in-crowd. The job hopper may be individually excellent, and it may be that he'd be a 5+ year employee if given high-quality work and colleagues, but all his paper says is that he never stayed long enough to join a corporate in-crowd, and that even if he was invited into one, he made the "wrong" decision to leave it.

<comment><USER33> I have heard people say that serial job hoppers have commitment issues which is a little weird because why would anyone commit to a shitty job. I tackle the issue directly by addressing it honestly when people ask why I'm looking for a new job only after 6 months. I guess so far I've given good enough answers.</comment></comment>


Starting a new job – What can I do to avoid getting fired? - <AUTHOR> Hi folks,
I just accepted an offer at a company I'm super excited about. The interview process was a mix of the traditional whiteboard interviews and watching me write code, so I suspect they got a good impression of my skill. The company seems like they know what they are doing in terms of mentorship and development processes. However, I am still worried that in a few months they will realize that I am incompetent or unproductive and I will be fired. What are the most time-effective things I can do to rapidly become competent and productive and thereby avoid this? I have a few weeks before I start that I can use to prepare.
My current ideas are:
1) Enforce a rigorous sleep schedule on myself, getting the same 8.5hrs every night.
2) Make a list of the technologies they are currently using (RoR and react.js), then pay for the best tutorials I can find and run through them repeatedly to drill myself to work fluently in them. In particular, look for tutorials that also involve testing and debugging.
3) Build app using the above technologies as an open source project and find someone I can pay to do code reviews of it.
4) Make flashcards and rote-memorize things that will help me look things up and navigate the codebase more quickly.
5) Aggregate a list of 100 webpages and build imitations of them in html and css and thereby finally teach myself by rote how CSS layout works.
6) Find someone outside the company (so they don't have any input on performance reviews) I can trust to talk to about things like project management or recognizing when I'm miscommunicating or taking the wrong approach.
7) Find someone inside the company that I exchange help on their tickets with in exchange for letting me watch how they work to see if I can borrow habits to become more efficient.
Does this seem like a good list? Do you have any things you might add? Any tips for any of these? <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome)

Be yourself. Ask your manager for feedback every other week. Have fun.

<comment><AUTHOR> > be yourself

Does the advice "be yourself" mean "do what you would tend by habit to do"? If so, I think that would probably have the same result it's had in 2/3 dev jobs I've held: me getting fired.

I originally thought I had impostor syndrome too, since it was constantly talked about at school. I should have mentioned that I've been fired from 2 dev jobs I've held before this, so apologies for that.

Explicitly asking for feedback is a good idea, though I worry that 2 weeks is too infrequent. Would every 1 week be annoying?

<comment><USER3> Why were you fired?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do probably need to spend more time figuring out the root causes, though perhaps that is better done by talking with a friend rather than just thinking things over by myself. My current understanding is this:

* When I'm confused about what a task really entails or what tools I can use and I try to get people to resolve that ambiguity, I sometimes cannot persuade them to do so.

* Sometimes I don't recognize that I lack the knowledge/documentation to do something and instead approach it with an "I'm smart and resourceful; I'll figure it out" attitude. By the time I convince myself that I need to ask for help, I'm embarrassed about not having made progress.

* I've gotten feedback that I "try to understand the universe" when debugging an unfamiliar system. That I should be more focused in my search. The difficulty here is that, when I'm working with an unfamiliar system, I don't know the lay of the land and so I end up spending a long time trying to get a sketch of a mental model of it because, well...how else could I solve problems?

* As my username suggests, I get distracted easily and sometimes find myself losing 5+ hours to distraction. I've been able to fight this to some degree using SelfControl.app and by making sure I get good sleep.

* I don't know how to come up with task estimates that have any relationship with reality. I've said "I don't know how to give software timeline estimates", but often get pushed to give a number anyway. I really really hate lying to a coworker/supervisor's face and wish I could find a way avoid it. I've tried to learn how to do estimation and bought a book on it, but all of the advice seems to focus on projects on a months-long scale rather than things that should take a couple hours.

<comment><USER4> If your goal is to not get fired, work on these issues instead of burning yourself out with the intense study techniques you suggest in the OP.

<comment><USER5> Well the things I listed in my OP are my concrete ideas for how to approach these working on these things. If you have other concrete suggestions, I would love to hear them.

As an example: The reason why I focus on studying rails is that all of the debugging techniques I know about involve getting a better idea of the system at some layer of abstraction. I suspect that my best shot at getting better at debugging is to know the framework the code is written in very well and thereby be able to understand the codebase more easily.

For a problem like "I can't get clarity around what we are trying to do here.", it seems like there aren't any books on the topic. Thats why I figured that finding a mentor would be good.

<comment><USER4> The problems you describe sound like communication issues, not technical issues. Specifically, it sounds like you have a real problem with asking for help when you need it. Your time might be better spent reading a book on effective communication or perhaps taking a course at a local community college.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm always on the lookout for good books on effective communication. Ones that I've read and found insightful include:

\- How to Win Friends and Influence People

\- Difficult Conversations

\- 5 Dysfunctions of a Team

I also bought Miscommunication by C. David Mortensen, but I haven't been able to get through more than a few pages because of how dry it is.

I suspect I need something more specifically focused on how to build mentorship relationships. Anything come to mind?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Getting copious sleep is a good idea! Generally, if your goal is to perform well at work, I recommend relaxing in your free time (instead of pushing yourself to train so hard) so that you'll be full of energy for the workday.

Of course, doing extracurricular professional development is fine and a lot of people love their side projects, but I'm worried that your attitude will lead you to burnout.

Your best bet is actually to trust that this company hires competently and that you'll be able to perform the job to their satisfaction after being onboarded. I know it's impossible to "just relax", but I wish you could do that <3

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love to "just relax" and that's what I used to do. But after having been fired for underperformance twice, I want to figure out what it is about the way I work that leads to problems and to change that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm completely sympathetic to your concern.

Cramming is a bad habit. My suggestion is to set aside 1-2 hours a day in the morning or evening to build things, do research and improve your skills. Continue this habit once you start your job. This will be _plenty_ of time to keep up.

Of all the things you listed, building real apps is the only thing that will see you really making progress. Everything else is too shallow and it's also hard to stay engaged in it.

Keep in mind that your new job wants you to apply yourself daily using their bread-and-butter technologies more than they want you to understand new technologies. For example, they probably want you to bang out React components or Rails views more than they want you to understand the more esoteric bits of those. As a web developer, consistent work > insight, every time.

Strongly suggest retreating even further from idle Internet use if possible. It is not good for you.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would say 1) as you have it above, and add a healthy lifestyle in general, then 2) try to pair as often as you can, figure out why your co-workers do the things they do

Honestly all that time outside of work might be better spent just being happy and using other parts of your brain, so that you can devote 6 hours during your work day to focusing on improving. Sure, you can exercise for 8 hours a day and get better progress than exercising for 3 hours a day, but for how long?

Edit: Read more comments. If you got fired for underperformance in the past, it might just be due to mis-alignment between yourself and the manager in charge. I had this at my last job. Sometimes it's tough for managers to properly assess work quality and production speed.

</comment><comment><USER9> Make sure you understand the agenda and priorities of your superiors. If you 'focus' your time and energy working on their priorities you'll be all set.

Incidentally, you can drive your own onboarding plan-- George Bradt is an excellent place to start > [http://www.amazon.com/The-Leaders-100-Day-Action- Plan/dp/111...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Leaders-100-Day-Action- Plan/dp/1118097548)

</comment><comment><USER10> > However, I am still worried that in a few months they will realize that I am > incompetent or unproductive and I will be fired.

Whoa, where is this coming from?! Jeez, is this your first job?

> Do you have any things you might add?

The note about sleep is good, you probably don't need the others. Let any of the above be driven only by your passions and interests. At work, communicate well and as clearly as possible. Show up, be positive, get your work done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ach, I left off the fact that I've been fired from 2/3 dev jobs for underperformance.

It is that last bit, "get your work done" that I'm worried about. I'm concerned that I'm going to not move fast enough. Since this has happened before, I figure that I need to do something significantly different than before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand why you're so anxious about it.

Is this your first job out of school?

Showing up, being openminded, and putting forth full effort will help you shine.

Relax a little :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, this is my fourth job. I've been fired from 2/3 jobs for underperformance.

<comment><USER12> This is the real issue. You need to tell us more about why you were fired if you want to get useful feedback.

My advice at this stage is just work harder than everyone else. Be the first to arrive and the last to leave and the company will find it very hard to fire you because of the signal it sends.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do probably need to spend more time figuring out why I was fired. My current understanding is this:

* When I'm confused about what a task really entails or what tools I can use and I try to get people to resolve that ambiguity, I sometimes cannot persuade them to do so.

* Sometimes I don't recognize that I lack the knowledge/documentation to do something and instead approach it with an "I'm smart and resourceful; I'll figure it out" attitude. By the time I convince myself that I need to ask for help, I'm embarrassed about not having made progress.

* I've gotten feedback that I "try to understand the universe" when debugging an unfamiliar system. That I should be more focused in my search. The difficulty here is that, when I'm working with an unfamiliar system, I don't know the lay of the land and so I end up spending a long time trying to get a sketch of a mental model of it because, well...how else could I solve problems?

* As my username suggests, I get distracted easily and sometimes find myself losing 5+ hours to distraction. I've been able to fight this to some degree using SelfControl.app and by making sure I get good sleep.

* I don't know how to come up with task estimates that have any relationship with reality. I've said "I don't know how to give software timeline estimates", but often get pushed to give a number anyway. I really really hate lying to a coworker/supervisor's face and wish I could find a way avoid it. I've tried to learn how to do estimation and bought a book on it, but all of the advice seems to focus on projects on a months-long scale rather than things that should take a couple hours.

> the company will find it very hard to fire you because of the signal it > sends.

I'm skeptical of this for a few reasons: I've done this at the previous jobs but to not much avail. Also, it isn't sustainable. Also, that sort of signal doesn't cut costs or add revenue, so why would it convince them to keep me on. It might make it more emotionally difficult to fire me, but firing someone is already emotionally difficult.

<comment><USER13> > Sometimes I don't recognize that I lack the knowledge/documentation to do > something and instead approach it with an "I'm smart and resourceful; I'll > figure it out" attitude. By the time I convince myself that I need to ask > for help, I'm embarrassed about not having made progress.

At my old job, we used the "15 minute rule" which worked pretty well for us. When you are coming to the realization that you're stuck, and don't know how to do something, you give it 15 more minutes to figure it out. If you haven't made progress in that 15 minutes, you must go get help.

It works both ways - for people that tend to ask for help too soon, without actually trying to figure it out for themselves, and for people that tend to try to figure it out themselves for too long, when asking another person may get it figured out quickly.

> I don't know how to come up with task estimates that have any relationship > with reality. I've said "I don't know how to give software timeline > estimates", but often get pushed to give a number anyway.

This is often difficult in that it seems like what we do as software developers is always novel and new. But, the techniques for estimation are the same, whether the project is months long, or hours long.

Break the task down into smaller and smaller bits until you hit bits that you CAN estimate the time of - then add them up.. and then probably double it...

In the beginning, you won't be able to do this off the cuff in a meeting, but the correct answer should be, "I don't know right now, but I'll have that estimate for you by Xpm today"

<comment><AUTHOR> > break the task down into smaller and smaller bits

One problem here is that if I don't really know everything the task entails, then I end up asking myself "am I going to really need to do this?" and can't think of a way to answer that question without writing code. Maybe the right approach here is to accept this and to write a few automated tests for external APIs.

Another is that I just need to be disciplined enough to do this consistently.

<comment><USER13> You don't need to know everything that the task entails to begin.

Surely you can do a first level breakdown of what needs to happen.

"First I receive data, then I process the data, then I send the data over there.

Ok, to receive the data, I'll be getting an HTTPS post, so I'll need to have an endpoint set up.

I don't know how endpoints are set up here, I'll need to ask, but I do know that it will be a POST, and the data will need to look like this...

After I get the data, I'll need to process it. It starts out looking like this, and I want it to end up looking like that. I do know that I will need to save the data in the database. I don't know what libraries/ORMs, whatever, I'll need to ask."

and so on.

I think you're still thinking from the bottom up - what are the all the details, from the beginning. But, think from the top down, making the task into smaller and smaller bits until you have reached an understanding of each bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Security is an illusion. You could be perfect and the company could go out of business for some strange reason.

The best advice is to stay upwind.

</comment><comment><USER15> Man I totally and utterly understand what you're going through. I feel like I was looking at a mirror when I was reading your comments. I am at my first full-time software development job and I feel the exact same way.

I've been lucky enough to "fake my way" through it so far but I am anxious about future roles.

Anyways, I hope it works out for you.

</comment><comment><USER16> Relax. Be aware (but not worried) of your surroundings and act as you do and everything will work out. Hey you got the job, right? That's got to count for something!

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a healthy fear to have. But dude - they've hired you.

So you're probably up to the task as long as you apply yourself.

Apply yourself - especially for the first 6 months.

</comment><comment><USER18> meh, just relax. i had the same mentality on my first job except yours still blows mine out of the water lol.

</comment><comment><USER19> * Listen more than you talk.

* Show up with a good attitude, every day.

* Under-promise, over-deliver.

* Be consistent 100% of the time, not great 10% of the time and crappy the other 90%.

<comment><AUTHOR> > under-promise, over-deliver

What do I do when I'm asked how long a feature will take and the honest answer is "I don't know"? I have tried to teach myself how to create software timeline estimates; I've still not figured it out, and it seems like nobody knows how to do it.

When I tell someone that I don't know and they still press me for an answer, I usually cave and give a random guess, followed by "but I would not rely on that." I feel so dishonest lying to people's faces like that but in the moment it feels like it is the only way to get the situation to end. Should I just get a friend and practice staing steadfast in refusing to answer? Is there something I can say that isn't going to sound like I am incompetent?

<comment> jon-wood Learn to qualify your "I don't know"s with details of how you're going to find out. "I don't know, but here's a guess" is far less useful than "I don't know, but I can do an hour or two of research and then get back to you with a decent estimate".

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem here is that I don't know how to generate an estimate except by actually doing the work.

<comment> jon-wood You're pretty new to the industry I'm guessing. Estimation is one of the hardest things a developer can be asked to do, and the only technique that will consistently work is getting experience so that you have similar tasks to compare the one you're estimating to.

In the meantime, try to break things down if you can't even start on an estimate - what are the steps involved in making Task X happen? Keep breaking those tasks down until you get to something you _can_ estimate. That's what the estimation time you ask for is used for.

<comment><USER5> Yea, I've only had about 4 years since I got out of school. Trying to be better able to break the task down is part of why I want to do the studying</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Facebook Ads price charts? - <AUTHOR>

Quite a few people have done some experiments on HN data, slicing and dicing it one way or another, trying to predict what's the good time to post and what is not and alike.
Are you aware of any mash-ups that do similar things with Facebook Ads price? I started experimenting with ads placements to drive some highly-targeted traffic to one of my online experiments, but find it quite confusing to see the bid price changing underneath me.
It'd be good to get at least rough idea what dynamics are like for my market segment - i.e. when are the peak and through times.
So, do you guys know of any tools like that, or should I just whip together a quick and dirty python/Selenium script that does the scraping?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> The best way would be to have access to Facebook Ads API. That would make everything really simple.

However keep in mind that you could only get a generail indication of the price through time for your given target. The real CPC Facebook apply to your ads change every minute and it's highly influenced by the quality of your ad.

The better your CTR is, the lower the CPC goes. Another factor that influence the CPC is how wide is your target. Usually targeting a small segment is more expensive than a broad target.

Anyhow, you can probably gather some useful data on CPC for your market from Optimal Social: <http://www.optimalsocial.com/></comment>


Loneliness: The problem technology elevated but hasn't yet solved - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/3157780/personal-technology/loneliness-the-problem-technology-elevated-but-hasn-t-yet-solved.html <comment><USER2> I'm only unhappy reading this article because it's so bad. People have had 'better' things to do than socialize for 100s of years.</comment>