Surveillance tools used by the Minneapolis Police Department - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/george-floyd-protests-surveillance-technology <comment><USER2> Post US Civil war, we encoded a set of rules that on their face did not discriminate on race. But their effect was basically to prevent black people from voting and enjoying their civil liberties.

Now we are encoding these biases into models built with mass surveillance. Many of us upper middle class white folks turn a blind eye. Subconsciously we know that's not _really_ targeting us. "We have nothing to hide" is the battle cry of the apathetic middle class person... when you trace the origin not just to law and order but the "war on terrorism" the relationship to race is even more depressing.

Maybe when we examine deeper we see those using the tools of mass surveillance look like us (heck are from this industry!). This same people working in the surveillance industry only imagine getting the "bad guys" not people that look like them!

On their face this has nothing to do with race. Examine deeper and you see, it's far easier to take away civil liberties when it's the "other" it's being taken away from. Where the in group can blissfully rationalize what's happening to get on with their day

<comment><USER3> > we encoded a set of rules that on their face did not discriminate on race. > But their effect was basically to prevent black people from voting and > enjoying their civil liberties.

That is quite a claim. I am neither agreeing or disagreeing, as I don't know enough about this. Could you share some specific examples of the rules that you are referring to and evidence that they were intended to prevent black people from voting and enjoying their civil liberties?

<comment><USER4> The parent is referring (not that accurately) to the variety of laws known as Jim Crow[1]. It's remarkable that these aren't widely if not universally known today. They were effectively eliminated by the Voting Rights Act[2].

Note, that Jim Crow was enacted not immediately after the Civil War but after the reconstruction period[3]. The aftermath of reconstruction involved a period of racist terror where the Ku Klux Klan and other forces effectively engaged in a guerilla campaign that restored white supremacy in the South.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era)

<comment><USER5> >They were effectively eliminated by the Voting Rights Act

Except that key provisions of the act were struck down in 2013. Those provisions prevented states with a history of disenfranchisement from changing their voting laws. Since the court ruling several of these states have started back on the path of disenfranchisement.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, the Supreme Court argument was the racism was no longer an issue so no reason to keep watching over those good old boys in the south.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious what the response would be if someone started advertising up there that they wanted all available protestor-shot high definition footage that showed police officers' faces (particularly when a nametag or readable badge number was also visible) for the stated purpose of training a facial recognition system.

Somehow I think it would be roundly condemned by every law enforcement agency with any presence or interest in the area.

<comment><USER8> And if they complain, you tell them "Don't worry, we'll use it just against the bad guys"

Hilarious, where can I invest?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Our great-grandchildren will rightfully despise us for not rolling back their surveillance state when we had the chance.

<comment><USER10> This is a serious question - how do we roll it back? What is our chance?

<comment><USER11> The squeaky wheel gets the grease - contact your representatives. If you contact them about an issue enough they'll actually get in touch and ask for your input when the issue finally starts getting traction.

I think it goes without saying but they're far more likely to listen if you're polite and suggest possible solutions instead of just complaining.

<comment><USER12> Specifically: call them on the phone.

Go to town halls if / when they have them.

And vote.

<comment><USER13> This implies absolute faith in the system. What if the system is flawed or corrupt?

<comment><USER14> Then we have to figure out how to use whatever power we have within this corrupt system to decorrupt it.

The "fun" answer, to burn the system down, does not leave a better system in its place. The individual components are left to scramble to develop their own systems, which in the absence of strong moral leadership, are inevitably just as as corrupt as the larger system they came from.

<comment><USER15> Are you aware of any noteworthy initiatives underway to decorrupt the system though? I often read that this is "just" all we have to do, but who's going to do it? "The System"? Democracy? AI? Rationalism? Religion? Our moms?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Let's not forget the agents provocateurs

[https://twitter.com/rexchapman/status/1266146369905070080?s=...](https://twitter.com/rexchapman/status/1266146369905070080?s=21)

<comment><USER17> I click on your link and the video looks suspicious, but I also have no clue who made it or who all those people are. Rex Chapman has a checkmark next to his name, but so do plenty of vacuous trolls. Inserting violent actors seems like a good way to discredit a protest, but "makes sense" isn't evidence.

So I typically end up just waiting a week or two for ostensibly fact-checked coverage and being out of the loop because there's so much uncertainty around developing events. But it feels like choosing feckless over reckless, so it's not a totally satisfying route.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In any other time, masked protesters might spark laws about facial coverings, so there's one silver lining about the current situation.

<comment><USER19> I don't know, the masks may have increased police fear, or served to dehumanize the appearance of the protesters, and contributed to the use of tear gas and rubber bullets in one of the protests.

<comment><USER20> Cops were perfectly willing to use those methods pre-COVID.

<comment><USER19> Sure, but I'm talking about probabilities of using them: The chance of surveillance of protesters ticking over into fear, and the lack of visible human faces making it even less personal. My guess is that if every protest nationwide for any issue at all began always wearing masks, with no other change in behavior, use of force against them would increase.

<comment><USER21> The factors are multiple in nature with the virus around; masking itself is not directly causal(after all, Asian countries have accepted it for decades), but there are certain other things that the virus did that make This Time Different:

1\. Lots of people staying at home.

2\. Lots of people out of work.

3\. A challenge to the authority of the police to conduct society(the virus is more threatening than they are, and populations are resisting the return to business as usual narratives)

4\. A lack of targets for police harassment to "let loose on" (because nobody is out and about)

These factors all build up to make a tinderbox where the officers who are looking for trouble(and they are always present and hungry for action) go out of their way to stir it up through provacateur tactics, and the population responds with quite a lot more force than usual since they are out of work and stuck at home and have nothing else to do. And it only escalates from there, because, again, you have police officers that are really dead set on the idea of "go get 'em", and see this as a role-playing opportunity. I should discuss the role-play in some more detail.

In the decades of collective memory, protests served as media flashpoints where the action is molded to the narrative. Everyone involved does a little bit of role-play, gets their fill of the narrative they want to see, and then goes home, with a few arrests and a bit of violence along the way, and a media product is subsequently served on the news afterwards, shaped to fit the tastes of the audience. Career activists would develop personal brands around the appropriation of protest groups towards news narrative, and the police were eager to play along and be the "other side". This dynamic of protest-as- product made protests seem unable to address legitimate concerns, since neither group was "going for the throat", as it may.

The dynamic has gradually shifted, at first slowly with protests like '99 Seattle WTO, and then faster as you get into the 2010's and live streaming takes off; coverage is getting much closer and more personal, and this runs in tandem with the rise of surveillance and police militarization creating pervasive cynicism about large institutions of all kinds. Branding of all kinds - from CNN to the blue check mark Twitter account - is mistrusted. Direct action is increasingly tolerated by the population, who can now easily hear the case for such without an intermediary. The virus has accelerated those trends, and so there's a sense of nobody holding back anymore.

Which, of course, makes it easier for the police to dehumanize the protestors.

<comment><USER19> I don't think I can do your thoughtful post justice except to say yes, that sounds about right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The CBP is also flying a federal Predator surveillance drone in Minneapolis:

[https://twitter.com/jason_paladino/status/126639991697850777...](https://twitter.com/jason_paladino/status/1266399916978507779)

You can be reasonably sure it is collecting facial biometrics and perhaps IMEIs.

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dzbe3/customs-and- border...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dzbe3/customs-and-border- protection-predator-drone-minneapolis-george-floyd)

<comment><USER23> Your links say it was flying at 20,000ft. I would be pretty surprised if it was collecting facial biometrics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Five to ten years ago (I really forget exactly when) I had my car towed from the street in front of my house in Minneapolis because I had forgotten to pay a few parking tickets – something which only could have happened with either an extremely bored officer manually entering license plate numbers to check... or with an automatic reader which searched every plate it saw.

<comment><USER24> Out of curiosity, how does on forget to pay several parking tickets?

Normally, I'm a very forgetful person, but letting debt pile up is something I never allow myself to forget.

When I lived in Germany everyone paid their parking tickets religiously. In the UK you'd also have your car towed away until you paid your tickets with interest plus the storage and towing fee.

<comment><USER25> I found a parking ticket blowing down the street. I'm sure whoever owns it will be reminded in a timely fashion.

j/k Their license will be suspended and the fee will be treble after the expiration date. And they still won't know until they get pulled over or run a license check.

<comment><USER26> But the GP clearly knew they had _multiple_ outstanding parking tickets. It's not like they causally didn't know.

edit/ I've been there personally and I was simply unable to afford them, it had nothing to do with forgetting. Thankfully I never had my car towed as a result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This country disgusts me more and more everyday. It's unfathomable. All of us lucky tech workers owe our help to whats going on right now. Do NOT be silent. Get out there tonight and tomorrow. CIS, white, whatever, allies need to be on the streets this weekend, you're valued.

This is a tipping point but we need allies, especially people who know tech. There are grass roots protest organizations popping up everywhere that need serious pro bono tech help. If you work on distributed systems or production networks this stuff is stupid simple to you.

Split your work between fast & impermeable systems to our democracy.

<comment><USER28> Stop calling me an "ally". I'm a human being. I belong to the same group you do. You can appeal to me the same way you appeal to everyone else. Thanks.

<comment><USER29> If you're not an ally, you're not an ally.

<comment><USER30> Reminds me of the Bush quote "you're either with us, or against us". Polarization generally doesn't lead to good results for a society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> And a bunch of choppers:

[https://mobile.twitter.com/SkyCirclesMPLS](https://mobile.twitter.com/SkyCirclesMPLS)

</comment><comment><USER32> Are people here seriously upset by technology used to identify rioters? I'm glad it exists and hope it helps to remove dangerous criminals from society.

I'm noticing a dangerous pattern emerging in the left where people are siding with rioting. You know nothing about what riots do to cities. It destroys them.

This is the moment where Trump wins the re-election because of a growing movement that is sympathetic to destroying the great city of Minneapolis over criminal conduct of a police officer.

<comment><USER33> Riots don't happen over one bad police officer. It might finally boil over and explode over one situation, but the situation has been brewing for so long, that no one can even remember the start of it anymore.

The actions of a riot might be that entities within areas gets destroyed, but that's hardly the goal.

It's similar to when kids mindlessly destroy public properties in the night in smaller cities. It's not because they just like to smash stuff, but because there is nothing else to do. Rioting tends to be the last possible action you have in your pocket, until a civil war appears. When people are feeling that no one is listening to them, they try to find other ways of getting heard.

And as history has shown us time and time again, riots sometimes work. I wish people didn't have to resolve to violence, but as an outsider who been watching the police brutality in the US for as long as I can remember, it doesn't surprise me that people has had enough.

<comment><USER34> Yes, if we learn anything from history it should be that stealing TVs and sneakers from stores owned by immigrants is the solution to social deprivation.</comment></comment></comment>


Functional programmers act as if Go is stealing a future that belonged to them - <AUTHOR> http://www.cirello.org/2015/03/2015-03-20-fp-enthusiasts-vs-go

<comment><USER2> I am pretty sure future will have generics. Even present has them in every (semi-)mainstream language. I would approach Go very carefully. Many things Google creates it then kills (e.g. Dart is under threat already: [http://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-for-entire- web.html](http://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-for-entire-web.html)).

<comment><USER3> I had the same fear too... It is not completely gone. But it helps a lot the fact that it is fully open-source, and the majority of contributors are outside of Google.</comment></comment>


Crowdfunding Platform for Developers, Fundry.com - <AUTHOR> http://fundry.com/project

<comment><USER2> I feel like Fundry makes a very direct an unpleasant approach to this. I enjoy Kickstarter so much because it doesn't come off as being "all about the money." It's not about "building ideas, getting paid." It's a little more mutual than that.

I do like that it is focused on software, which does allow you to do that feature request functionality, though.</comment>


Sending a Person to Mars Is the Last Thing You Would Want to Do - <AUTHOR> http://www.intergalactictravel.space/peopleonmars.php <comment><USER2> NASA's had a robotic presence on Mars since 2003. Spirit operated from 2003-2010, Opportunity from 2003-present, Curiosity from 2012-present. All of these have been fairly widely reported in pop culture, and NASA continues to actively make & publicize discoveries from them:

[http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/home/](http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/home/)</comment>


Predictions.txt - <AUTHOR> http://dcurt.is/predictions-txt <comment><USER2> On my list from February, 2012 are:

\- Egypt's president will promise to protect all citizens

\- Tennis: Sharapova will rematch Lisicki

\- 346 homes will be destroyed in a fire in Colorado

\- Students who will bully a N.Y. bus monitor, will be suspended for a year

Point: post it in February next time dammit!!

</comment><comment><USER3> _Retina screens will be the largest leap for computing in a decade._

Um, no.

<comment><USER4> I see this point as being fairly pessimistic. It's not saying that Retina screens are completely fantastic (although they are), but that many of the other tech revolutions won't have the impact on the mainstream that we expect them to. High pixel density displays, on the other hand, will touch anyone who spends much time at all looking at screens, and will change how interfaces are made.

That said, 10 years is an eternity in this business.

<comment><USER5> Assuming screens stick around. Perhaps it's a long-shot prediction, but what if Retina is the Blu-ray of flat panel displays? (Inarguably superior to most of its predecessors, yet fails to gain critical mass and is soon replaced by a whole new medium altogether.)

<comment><USER6> Um, what medium could that be? I don't see any competitors to the screen right around the corner

<comment><USER5> Again, a total long shot. But I was thinking both in terms of augmented- reality (Google Goggles) and bigger transparent glass-like displays (Samsung Smart Window).

But whatever it is, it would only catch on if Apple releases it.

<comment><USER7> gs/Goggles/Glass (I make the same mistake all the time.)

I broadly agree with you. However, I don't think that Project Glass will replace desktops / traditional computers, but I could see them being a replacement for tablets - in that it's the way most people will do un- intensive browsing, cheicking emails while sat on the sofa, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Hilariously, it's still the best non-iPad tablet you can buy.

Really? Pretty low jab at Android, calling the Fire the #1 tablet that isn't an iPad.

<comment><USER6> This was written in February. Nexus 7 I think everyone can concur is a better tablet as of today.

<comment><USER5> Still, even most horrible Android tablets from last year were way more usable than the Fire, in my opinion. And prior to February there were some pretty decent tablets too. (Transformer Prime, Galaxy Tab, etc)

<comment><USER6> I think the Fire might have been more usable for people in general, that is easier for normal people to setup and start consuming Amazon content. I don't have a strong opinion on this though as I think all Android tablets I've seen are crap (does not include Nexus 7 which I have not seen yet).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think several of these are spot on. You already nailed Retina obviously. Next up is Apple Television sets, which many rumors are pointing to an announcement either late this year or early next year. Kindle Fire will ultimately either fail, increase in price (perhaps different versions of the Fire?). Microsoft phones will catch on, but never lead the market. Hollywood can't be killed any time soon. However, as tech gets better, the ability to produce high-quality content will shift in favor of the indies. Free wireless seems like a no-brainer, but the companies that control those channels are already terrified of losing ground to new tech, so offering something for free (that they can't arbitrarily raise the prices on to make up for other areas) is something they won't be keen to do. Facebook needs to focus hard on mobile. Everyone knows this.

Good read.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Some service in the future is going to curate the top 100,000 or 1,000,000 queries into a list of great, precise results."

So, basically, we'll see the development of yet another hierarchically organized oracle?

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't imagine anyone buying a Facebook phone. Pretty much everyone hates their tech. Even my parents. Why would anyone take a risk on a phone they were involved with?

<comment><USER11> Thought experiment: $100 subsidized, fun design, good accessories, amazing social photo experience, great keyboard, and comes with all the free messaging you can stand paired with a cheap data plan. Kin + Crackberry

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why not google "what camera should I buy" instead of "digital camera".

<comment><USER6> Do these results look that much better?

[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=what%20camera%20sh...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=what%20camera%20should%20I%20buy)

<comment><USER13> Yes, actually. Those results are information on how to select a camera. "Which camera should I buy?" is such a subjective question that it's impossible to usefully answer it without knowing more about the querying user's needs, desires, and budget.

As nice as the pipe dream of Siri as the Star Trek AI who can magically infer all the information needed to precisely answer an ambiguously-phrased question is, it's not going to happen any time soon.

<comment><USER14> Once you ask the user what matters, the problem is eminently solvable: <http://daring.is> (my startup)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Some service in the future is going to curate the top 100,000 or 1,000,000 queries into a list of great, precise results"

Isn't this exactly what Mahalo tried to do?

</comment><comment><USER16> Off topic: I've been looking for some kind of app to keep track and share predictions like these? Would you use it if it did?

<comment><USER7> Have you seen <http://longbets.org/> ?

Maybe it's over a longer time scale than you were thinking...

<comment><USER16> This is what I had in mind. Thanks.

<comment><USER17> There's also <http://kezera.com> \- but I can't tell how fast invites are going out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anything there non-obvious? Despite the Android hindsight...</comment>


Ask HN: How would you monetize jQuery? Coffeescript? GHC? - <AUTHOR>

If you were developing a new language/library/tool that you wanted to release as open source, and that has no real business being SAAS, how would you try to make a living off of it, or at least support the time you spend? Plain old donate button? Crowdfunding for additional feature development? Restrictive license for commercial use? I'd like to hear about some success stories for such projects, the relationship of the strategy to the type of project, and the results of testing various strategies in the field. <comment><USER2> It is an interesting question. I'd like to see what HNers think about it. Personally, I would think that offering dev services or tutoring (sencha, red hat, SPServices, etc.), restrictive licensing (Green sock, sencha again, neo4j) would be more likely to self-sustain than payment offerings (donations, crowdsourcing, etc). I guess a good company to watch is famo.us since they are currently making the rounds after being funded.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think offering code as open source and then charging for support is very typical. E.g. MySQL, Red Hat, etc. But that is probably only profitable after a ton of people are using the software in question.

If you are releasing a new thing, you won't have an existing install base, so probably better to charge for licenses. After you get a fanbase, you can crowdfund your version 2.0 or related material.</comment>


Boy discovers microbe that eats plastic - <AUTHOR> http://www.mnn.com/technology/research-innovations/blogs/boy-discovers-microbe-that-eats-plastic <comment><USER2> This is how "Mutant 59: The Plastic Eaters" [http://www.amazon.com/Mutant-59-Plastic-Eaters-Kit- Pedler/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Mutant-59-Plastic-Eaters-Kit- Pedler/dp/0670496626) started, a researcher who wants to clean up oil spills and plastic trash has developed a microbe the eats plastic that is accidentally released into the sewers of London.

</comment><comment><USER3> Old? not sure, but probably what I've seen on reddit a few years ago.

Very great read, none-the-less.

<comment><USER4> Wired story from May 2008:

Teen Decomposes Plastic Bag in Three Months <http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/teen-decomposes/>

<comment><USER5> And that's also not entirely right as these microbes were known before the the kid "discovered" them: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria>

But _Teen discovers world saving tech_ is too good a story to let reality get in the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Someone correct me if I am wrong here, but wouldn't this same selective breeding process happen naturally in any waste area enriched with plastics? (Bacteria will reproduce to the extent that they can metabolize the plastic.) The fact that plastics in landfills haven't disappeared seems to indicate that optimal bacteria in the wild simply don't eat plastic that fast.

<comment><USER7> The idea is that he isolated the bacteria and identified conditions (i.e. temperatures) where the bacteria are more effective.

If you increase the population of a natural agent and modify the environment, then you should be able to significantly speed up the decomposition of plastics.

<comment><USER6> Very interesting. Perhaps the article should be titled "boy discovers conditions under which bacteria eat plastic". It still seems like introducing the new bacteria into the environment would be pointless, though. If the conditions in the landfill are left as they are now, I imagine the new bacteria would evolve back into what is presently optimal. If we modify the conditions, these new strains of bacteria would evolve on their own anyway... I guess I am assuming there are no local nash equilibria in the competition between different strains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure it makes sense to say that he "discovered" the microbe.

Isn't it more like he "created" it?

<comment><USER9> I don't think he created it, he selected the best performers of an apparently existing species and bred them.

<comment><USER8> Well, right. That's how you go about creating an organism.

The fact is, there were no bacteria that did what his bacteria does (degrade plastic quickly.) Now there is, as a result of his intention and actions.

I'd call that creation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Take it as you will.. A story.

We change our own oil in our vehicles. We save it in oil cans for either burning on a fire or pouring along with gasoline down a hornet hole. We know it's "Bad for the environment" but we do it.

One year, we decided to re-roof our house. Considering it was 2500 sq ft, it was an arduous job. Now, for those that know about roofing, you use tar paper, which is asbestos with really thick petroleum tar (think super thick motor oil). One evening, we left a half of a roll lying outside cause we were too damned tired of taking it off the raised porch. It was on concrete, and not the grass.

The next morning (we started about 9am), the roll of tar paper was crawling - literally. There were hundreds of thousands of ants milling about everywhere. We go to shake them off, and lots of egg sacs fall out. But along with the white egg sacs, we notice that the inside of the roll is now pure white fibers. The ants ATE the petroleum tar.

We've noticed similar events, but never saw it happen over the course of 12 hours. We then tested it later with used motor oil... they ate it up too.

It just tells me that whenever nature creates something (petroleum), it also creates something to eat it. And sometimes nature creates stuff to eat man made stuff.

<comment><USER11> I don't think any serious research ever posited that nature can't survive the after-effects of human activity.

The issue is that if we allow motor oil, lead, mercury, etc to become part of the ecosystem, then nature will no longer be friendly to -us-.

Consider that we already live in a world where one must ration their fish intake for fear of mercury poisoning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hmm..news.. There thousands types of plastics, some are well known to be biodegradable since 1960-s. For example, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyhydroxybutyrate>.</comment>


Good news: Venture investment is back - <AUTHOR> http://thebln.com/2009/10/good-news-venture-investment-is-back/

<comment><USER2> If the bar gets raised and startups have to do more to get investment is that a bad thing?

Or is that returning to where investment _should_ be? Where the good stuff (and we know its good because the team rocks and/or because they're accelerating) and everything else has to work even harder to get _there_.

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing I found really interesting was the disparity in size of investment between Europe and the US (with the UK in the middle).

Anything like this is going to miss a lot of small angel activity, but the mean European investment is barely half the size of the typical American one. There'll be some significant skew from the outsize Facebook/Twitter $100m+ rounds – it'd be interesting to work out what the median round size is too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think size of invsestment reflects the amount of capital available in each geography which drives competition for deals and ultimately the bargaining power of companies ('good' companies can secure more cash in US), and different attitudes to risk and return.</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone noticed a dramatic decrease in Amazon affiliate revenue? - <AUTHOR>

I help my mom run a cooking blog, and most of our revenue comes from linking to products using the Amazon affiliate program. Over the last month, our revenue from Amazon has dropped significantly (almost an order of magnitude). Nothing else about the blog has changed, including our traffic.
Has anyone else noticed this? I supposed that it's possible that people don't buy very much this time of year in anticipation of the holidays. If it's happening to other people, then maybe it makes sense to wait until the real shopping season starts before reacting.
Any insight is appreciated. <comment><USER2> You should look at the historic data: So how did you do in October of this year vs. October of last year or the year before? That will tell you if you're hitting a specific season that's slow. You should also look at what people are buying since that will also give you clues. Also it's not the amount of traffic you get, but the quality of it — are your readers as good as they were when you first started the blog?

</comment><comment><USER3> Earnings was up for me</comment>


Lockdown Mode on the Librem 5: Beyond Hardware Kill Switches - <AUTHOR> https://puri.sm/posts/lockdown-mode-on-the-librem-5-beyond-hardware-kill-switches/ <comment><USER2> I am glad physical switches are making a come-back in computers and phones but I wish it had happened sooner and because it's more convenient and practical than a stupid piece of unreliable integrated flaky software rather than for privacy concerns (meaning: why did we convert hardware knobs to software ?).

<comment><USER3> > why did we convert hardware knobs to software ?

Reliability.

Switches fail, and make devices less waterproof.

I have had plenty of modern devices fail due to broken on/off or volume switches (and failed sensors, and failed plugs or sockets).

<comment> java-man And the software "switches" fail too: I had wifi on my iphone 4 disabled after an update. Who knows why.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This really reminds me of Doctorow's Walkaway. Not exactly my favourite book, but it has its merit. Among others "Lockdown mode" is mentioned right in the beginning as being something crucial to get right. Glad to see at last someone is actually trying. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> That's pretty nice. I wish more devices came with hardware kill switches, especially on laptops -- I always disable the camera and microphone on my laptops, and it would be so much easier just to throw a physical switch (as in a switch that actually breaks electrical contacts to the camera and microphone).

</comment><comment><USER6> Id like No 1 and 2 to be separated. I stay on Wifi a lot but rarely use Bluetooth. Far as mic vs camera, I also use the camera separately from the phone. Keeping video off by default can block privacy invasions that can happen, by attackers or _buggy apps_.

On covering tablet/laptop camera threads, a few people not worried about spying said some video app came on broadcasting to coworkers. One was in bed half-naked with spouse. Another on toilet in office. So, they cover cameras or kill video apps by default to prevent that stuff from happening again.

<comment><USER7> You can always turn off Bluetooth via software to save on battery if that's what you mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish they had gone with a single kill switch. The most common use case is probably "Nothing gets in or out right now." But instead of flipping one switch one direction, the user must now flip three switches the same direction to get that common behavior.

Also, what's the use case for switches flipped in _different_ directions that wouldn't be covered by software buttons? We can't possibly be talking about targeted attacks-- in those cases you're screwed no matter what.

That only leaves indiscriminate software attacks. Now take the hardware switch setting where baseband=off and wifi=on. I guess it's nice that evil software cannot pretend that baseband is off when it's actually on. But evil software attempting to "get out" is probably going to use a high level call out to the net. So who cares that it must now leave through the wifi radio instead of the baseband radio?

<comment><USER9> I'm happy about multiple switches. I don't really understand how cell basebands work and if I can trust a software kill. My biggest issue with my phone is cell phone companies selling real time location data, so I will mainly have that switch off while using wifi for communication. If the software kill means the baseband transmits no data, great, I'd be fine with just that. If it means the basebands transmits no data from the phone, but still beacons out to cell towers, I absolutely will want to kill it while remaining on wifi.

<comment> mike-cardwell I also expect to have the baseband switched off most of the time and wifi on most of the time.

I basically want a pocket computer. Access to the cell network is a useful feature, but one I don't need most of the time, so why be connected to it all the time, with all the privacy concerns that comes with.

<comment><USER10> It will be interesting to see how carriers react to the option, though. As it stands, they are happy to help themselves to your location and usage data (much like ISPs do), having a handset that could turn that money-making flow on and off might cause at least some to refuse to take you on as a customer.

<comment><USER11> There's plenty that are "bring your own device". From a carriers standpoint, switching off the basband is the same as turning it off, so I would rralpy doubt they could figure out the difference, much less do anything about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have mixed feelings about a phone that might lull me into thinking it's not a computer controlled by a hostile entity. Carrying a cheap android, I _know_ I have an attacker in my pocket. On the other hand, I like the idea of being able to mitigate the danger further than I can already.

<comment><USER13> I like this approach but I don't think you take it far enough. I like to scatter broken glass around my apartment so I don't lull myself into a false sense of security that it's safe to walk to the bathroom in the dark. I also have my girlfriend poison some of my meals at random so I don't get complacent about food being safe to eat.

<comment><USER12> Look, if you want to attack my point with a house analogy, you're doing it wrong. A better attack by analogy would be, "I don't want a lock on my front door, because locks make you complacent."

<comment><USER13> If you think your analogy makes my point better than mine then you haven't understood my point. I might also have mentioned how I only befriend convicted criminals to avoid falling into the trap of thinking I can trust my friends, or how I only hire accountants who have been convicted of defrauding their clients so I don't get complacent about checking they are not stealing money from me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am yet to see actual images of this phone. Sounds like something I would buy, especially if I can install just a plain Debian release on it.

<comment><USER15> Is there any reason to think it would run anything other than PureOS? Wouldn't you lose all the functionality they are talking about in the post if you installed another OS?

<comment><USER16> Yeah, they say "Does not use Android or iOS. The Librem 5 comes with the mobile version of our FSF-endorsed operating system PureOS by default, and is expected to be able to run most GNU+Linux distributions." under "Security focused by design" on the product page ([https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/)).

Myself, I really want to get NixOS running on it.

<comment><USER17> _> Myself, I really want to get NixOS running on it._

Let's start a working group, stat! What a cool story it would be if we could say that we built images for the thing before it ever even shipped and had a one liner to emit new NixOS-based images for a Librem 5.

There is so much potential for experimenting with update models, read-only secondary secure OS partitions (combined with Nix's reproducability starts getting pretty compelling, in my opinion).

I go by the same name and am persistently in the Nix(OS) related IRC channels. Cheers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What qualities do you look for in a junior developer? - <AUTHOR> I am currently hiring developers for a junior position again for my startup.
I say "again", because the first time round we had so many applicants (400+) that it was a tough challenge discerning the best candidates from the pool and had allocated 10 interviews a day. The interviews were so bad that I ultimately rejected all of the applicants. I also withdrew the position because it was wasting my time.
Preferably, I would like to hire senior developers instead, but they are too expensive for my budget.
I slogged it out for another 4 months and I'm giving it another go on hiring juniors. But would not like to make the same mistake. <comment><USER2> I'm a little worried you're never going to find a junior developer that's satisfactory enough to qualify for what you want, explicitly because you're looking for a senior developer at junior developer pay.

Junior developers need to be given time to make mistakes and learn. I know a senior developer might seem too expensive for your budget, but hiring a junior developer might ultimately cost more for your project over time. The time that they're going to take to have to ramp up and learn everything is probably going to eat into the time to deliver any sort of product. What I'm saying is that a junior developer is a time and money investment, and sometimes it just pays to hire a senior developer/contractor and have them get the project out.

Anyway... what I would look for in a junior developer isn't whether or not they're amazing at data structures etc. I could really give a rats ass as to whether or not they're able to do something like Codility. What I need to see is that they know at least some basics on how to code, and that they have the aptitude and motivation to learn.

The two most important qualities to me in a software developer is the ability to communicate and the ability to learn. Why is communication necessary, particularly in a junior developer? I need to know that they're willing to swallow their egos and come to someone for help. It's the fastest way to learn.

Hell, I feel like I learned much faster because I was able to swallow my pride and ask someone with seniority for help. It didn't mean that I would run to them at the first sign of a struggle, but if I was burning most of my day doing something that I felt wasn't really going to teach me much, but was causing me to struggle with something - I would go and ask someone senior for help.

<comment><USER3> Ability to communicate and ability to think.

That's the core of what I look for in any (junior) developer.

Its the skeleton on which everything else hangs.

Its not the only qualities but the most important ones.

<comment><USER4> I can do those, but still learning how to program. Any recommendations on job searches?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The interviews were so bad that I ultimately rejected all of the applicants. I also withdrew the position because it was wasting my time._

Maybe you shouldn't hire juniors? Junior devs are an investment and we owe them respect and genuine mentorship. By definition, they will 'waste your time'.

And frankly, if you can't afford seniors, your company's mentorship opportunities will be weak enough that the smart play for truly capable, career minded juniors would be to work elsewhere.

<comment><USER6> And to add to this: Juniors are cheaper in salary, but that doesn't mean they're cheaper.

Hiring is not free -- in fact by the sounds of it the OP has already spend at least tens of hours unsuccessfully trying to hire someone.

Mentoring time is not free. You're also paying them to learn (read docs, rework code, etc) whether you realize it or not.

There's also a very non-zero chance you're incurring technical debt at a high rate, and that may not be apparent until you go to fix bugs (and cause 15 more every time you do) or add new features (and need to rebuild half the software to do so).

Knowing how to build good, maintainable and supportable software comes with experience and this is what you're paying a senior for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When hiring juniors hunger to learn should far outweigh qualifications and raw knowledge in a particular technology imo.

That said, I think there may be a deeper issue here. You want to hire seniors which suggests that your startup _needs_ seniors and the experience that they bring. But you're hiring juniors.

You're going to end up disappointed as you need senior developers at this point.

They're going to end up disappointed as they require senior developers in the team to learn from and grow.

(Perhaps unrelated, I think if you've interviewed 400 people and haven't found someone "good enough", the issue may not be with the candidates...)

</comment><comment><USER8> On the resume, I look for a mix of:

* Technical education (college degree, classes, etc.)

* Hands-on technical experience. This can range from an internship, to just building computers for friends and family. Something that shows initiative.

* Some other work experience, even if it's a cashier at Dominos or a volunteer position at a library.

I avoid resumes of candidates that have degrees but no measurable hands-on experience outside of school. I find students that have gone through high school and college with absolutely no work experience to be entitled and often spoiled. I understand that is not a universal truth, but I've observed it enough to not bother with those candidates.

In the interview itself, I look for candidates who:

* Are excited about the job, learning new stuff.

* Don't have a bad attitude. This can often be evident when talking about your stack. If you have, say, a Java stack, and the candidate makes some offhand comment about how Ruby is so much better, it's a hint about how they'll act on the job.

* Can answer basic questions about the stack they'll be working on. I'm not talking algorithms here. This is mostly to test if they give a shit about the job enough to read up on the details for 20 minutes before coming in for an interview.

</comment><comment><USER9> I would caution you against hiring junior developers.

Typically you hire junior developers for what they will become, and not where they currently are. That means the traits you're looking for is a desire to learn and genuine interest in technology.

If you only have junior developers, they will have a much tougher time learning. They'll never see how software should be built.

There are exceptions. Really simple prototypes is one of them. Some maintenance of existing projects might be another exception, depending on the quality of that project, and the type of work involved. Anything reasonably complicated, I wouldn't expect them to finish, and if they did finish, I'd expect it to need to be rewritten very early on.

If you want to do it right, hire a mid level or senior developer. It's better to have a single senior developer than 5 junior developers. If you're looking to hire multiple developers another choice would be to hire one senior developer and one junior developer. Just don't hire only junior developers.

</comment><comment><USER10> First of all I can't believe that there was not even one decent junior dev among 400+. Last year I was in the same position as you but received far less applications (15-20). 3 of them was decent, one of them we employed and he turned out much better than on paper.

Main thing is to give them homework: not more than 2 hours project that they will solve at home and commit to private repo. Make it unique enough to avoid stackoverflow copy-pastes. Do not give them academic problems, ask them to create real world examples. For example: create CRUD that does something specific like file uploads with resize or similar; access unreliable API and do something with it; create calendar that allows multiple tasks per day (UI/UX); scrape data from the website and put it in to DB.

Those are just examples, but they are easy enough to do in under 2 hours and you can test results in under 2 minutes. Out of those 400+ applications, half of them will not even bother spending 2 hours on a task, then in a day or two you will restrict that remaining ones to about 50-60 just by checking results of the task. Rest are just personal interviews. Just remember to write a feedback email even to those unsuccessful applications.

<comment><USER11> Very interesting approach. I've heard of an approach similar to this one, although it was not limited to junior devs. You can quickly find out if a possible final candidate is appropriate, and a good fit for the company, by simply working with them for a day on a small project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> >> Preferably, I would like to hire senior developers instead, but they are too expensive for my budget.

I think you will find you will save money in the long run if you hire senior developers if you actually do require senior-level development skills instead of expecting junior developers to do the same work for lower pay.

</comment><comment><USER13> >>Preferably, I would like to hire senior developers instead, but they are too expensive for my budget.

It sounds like you're trying to hire cheap developers, not junior developers.

If you really want junior developers, you have to do a crazy thing; hire people that are actually junior (have very little experience) but have potential. If you'd done that 4 months ago you'd probably have some decent developers right now.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why waste time, buy a service like codility and only interview the best couple ones. I don't work for any of those online code tests btw, but they're pretty good for sorting applicants and cheaper than your own time.

Junior developers need to have high IQ and ability to code, everything else you will need to teach them anyway. Keep in mind that if you don't have time to teach them they will not be cheaper than seniors, unless all you need is bums on seats to fool investors or something nefarious like that.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been in this exact situation and had some real success (and failure)... I think hiring a junior developer who will be great and good for your organization comes down to one thing: how much passion do they have for programming?

If they don't do it on their own, and don't seem interested in programming for their own benefit outside of the job, then don't hire them.

People who are new but enthusiastic and spend a lot of time learning on their own are who you want.

Subsequently, hiring too many junior developers can be a hinderance because there aren't enough people to coach and guide them. It adds technical debt to your organization and makes for a shitty experience for the junior dev. They need help and they need people who have the time to help them. It's easy for junior devs to feel inadequate and suffer in silence.

Finally, ask yourself why don't have the funds to hire a more experienced engineer. It may be a sign of an unhealthy organization or goals which are way too big. I say this from experience and the pain I felt as a result of not listening to my gut and pushing back ferociously. You think firing someone "sucks," try laying off a room of people you know, who you care about, and who have been good to you and your organization... bad goal setting will cause it.

<comment><USER16> >> If they don't do it on their own, and don't seem interested in programming for their own benefit outside of the job, then don't hire them.

I strongly disagree with this. We as an industry desperately need to stop propagating these myths about what makes a good developer. You're enthusiasm for programming outside of work has jack all to do with your ability to perform the job functions expected of a SWE. Is it a sign if you are into programming as a pass time? Sure, but it's by no means an indicator of the quality of said programming. We don't expect lawyers to be litigating cases in their free time and we would never tell an accounting firm to pass up any candidate who doesn't demonstrably love doing their taxes. People work 8+ hours a day in these jobs and otherwise have lives. One could even argue that other interests is better for the long term prospects of candidate because they are less likely to burn out. 8 hours a day is more than enough time to build up domain expertise given the ~260 days you can expect to spend doing this each day

<comment><USER17> Let me qualify the parent comment with my own feelings, as i knew the moment i read their comment what your reply would say.

Of the 30 or so engineers i have worked closely with over the last 6 years, nothing correlates better to the programmers ability than what i describe as "passion".

I do not share the stance that this requires someone to spend time outside of work on personal projects or burning the midnight oil on work. Instead, what i look for is a burning desire to be creative and solve problems, specifically with code. I give candidates a number of opportunities to express why coding is important to them, and what would they be doing in its absence. If i had to only ask a single interview question, it would be something to that effect.

While i don't mean to suggest every excellent programmer shares this passion, it has become the best single barometer i can find of gauging future ability. With midlevel and senior devs this task becomes a lot easier because you have so much experience to lean on. For juniors, passion is king.

<comment> le-mark I agree with the grandparent that relying on passion is toxic to our profession, almost exploitive. But as you say, it's a reliable indicator. Passionate juniors can be their own problem though, like monstrous object hierarchies for simple problems. But that's a separate issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> \- A voracious appetite for learning.

\- A genuinely nice person.

If I have two things, I'm pretty sure the rest will work out in the end.

<comment><USER19> I second that.

I had a few students working with me. The one guy who asks questions when he doesn't understand something and who isn't afraid to say so, helps me the most.

I also like when I understand what skills a junior dev has (e.g. HTML, CSS, JavaScript vs Java), so I know what I can outsource to him and have a clue about how long it will take.

But I also learned, that the overhead of managing someone and helping them can eat up all my time. You need to balance it out and have a backlog of low priority tasks to throw at them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> For juniors I look for some background in the area I'm hiring in with some success in that area.

Mainly, though, I look for enthusiasm and eagerness to learn, the ability to communicate clearly, and intelligence. I also look for a balance of self- determination and the willingness to work through a problem on their own but also enough sense to know when and how the to ask the right questions when needed. Finally, honesty. If they've fluffed up their resume that is a red flag.

You are not going to be hiring senior level developers who've misclassified themselves. Juniors are going to take work; there is no avoiding that. Adjust your expectations to that reality and you will have a better chance of pulling in an employee that will do well for you over time.

</comment><comment> baku-fr Don't forget that junior developers... are junior. They might not be the best devs in the world yet, but I'm pretty sure they can fit in any mold if you give them the right resources.

In your case, I'd say someone passionate enough to provide good value for the team. Just make sure you don't scare them away by making them feel they might "waste your time" ;-)

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe you should make the first step a small automated coding challenge? No longer than 1-2h and it's a simple filter.

Finishing the challenge on itself will be the first filter; then you can review the ones who finished it and interview the ones you like most.

BTW if you are looking for a remote web dev (front-end or back-end) drop me a line "public at francisco.io" <= my CV.

<comment><USER22> I personally won't do any coding challenges without at least an initial technical phone screen. It's not really fair to ask for that kind of time investment from candidates without being willing to reciprocate.

<comment><USER23> We had over 400 applicants for a recent position.

Fairly giving them a time investment of 30 minutes (reading CV, tailoring technical interview, answering questions) would mean 200 hours of productivity loss. There is no way to defend this to a company, especially when hiring more than 1 a year.

If no coding challenge then it all comes down to the CV. You'll miss out on promising humble candidates who lack the CV buzzword bingo, and get burned on mediocre candidates whose parents paid for them to go through a top university. That's not fair to the talent either.

Of course if someone completes the coding challenge, you give them the time investment they deserve (8-16 hours spread over multiple employees). You save this time by declining those that do very poorly on the challenge, or refuse to do it out right.

You may not have an idea how awkward and depressing a technical phone interview is with a candidate that is not suited to the role. And delegating this to HR/Recruiters is a surefire way to increase noise and crash the hopes of people who pass the screen, but fail badly on future interviews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My former company hired interns and junior level engineers regularly. If you are hiring jr devs because you can't afford sr people you are going to have a bad time. Jr Devs require constant attention early on if you want them to ever move pass the junior part. They need the ability to fall on their face occasionally and resources who can't point them in the right direction when they do. But if you can't afford to pay the Sr people your junior people are going to leave right around the point where they start really being a great value(that's 2-3 years in tops).

If you're looking for how to find hidden gems, my best advice is don't bother. Ask them fizz buzz (yes literally fizzbuzz), some basic OO vocab, and have them do an easy design problem. If they have a pulse and can do that, they're probably worth your time. For most devs of any level it's really hard to tell whether they will be valuable additions until you've actually worked with them. For a jr dev it's a pointless exercise. Find someone motivated, who seems like they can learn, and spend time putting in place a framework to make sure they have the tools to succeed.

</comment><comment><USER24> You need to find an edge. Maybe you can find the no. 3 university in your city and reach out to the top performing students there. You could also try the same strategy with a coding boot camp. What you can't do is just cast a net and expect to find talent. You have to actively recruit the people who fit the profile you need.

</comment><comment><USER25> We're a small company in a small town. When we go to hire, we can't afford software developers, period. We can't pay relocation even if they were willing to move here. There's a local university, but we have yet to see a graduate of the C.S. program who was competent, willing to stay in town, and not already hired by one of the area's larger employers. We've made a couple of good hires, none of whom had significant programming experience.

We look for people with analytical backgrounds: engineering or the hard sciences. They have to be capable of independent thought and interested in solving hard problems. That's what we have to offer as an employer: you get to do interesting work and live in a really nice town.

<comment><USER26> What town, out of curiosity?

<comment><USER25> I'd prefer to remain pseudonymous, more or less, so I'll just say that we're in the same town as a big public university with a substantial ag program. I've lived in other towns like this, and I suspect my comment applies to any of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Some of the best engineers(junior/senior) I've found have come from community events. If you're on the hunt for some juniors then I recommend that you get our of your building and go to where the juniors are for the specific area of focus you're looking to hire for. These people have already shown the innovative that they're interested in learning more about that particular field and willing learn outside of the traditional 9-5. You can still run into bad apples, but it will help you look for key traits and behaviors that can increase the odds in your favor for attracting juniors that are coachable, self starters, or show an ability to grow.

</comment><comment><USER28> Junior developers are just that - junior developers.

Sounds to me like what you really want are senior developers at a junior developer salary.

</comment><comment><USER29> Find someone who codes for a hobby and have them show you a portfolio. Prove they can get things done. Who cares if they leveraged the internet for assistance? It's part of getting things done. Who cares if they don't know CS concepts? You're going to review all their code anyway. Most importantly, find someone who you enjoy spending time with and will enjoy investing mentoring hours into.

Another approach: break your backlog into piecemeal tasks and hire senior freelancers to do fixed work for fixed costs.

</comment><comment><USER30> * Curiosity

* Take initiatives

* Knows how to learn new things, +/\- fast (and loves it)

* Knows when its the wrong way (even if its too late) and turn back

From my little experience, you don't have to do big technical challenges to detect those. But again I have very little experience in the business (5 interns and 1 junior hires) Social habilities are important too, but don't get fooled by those who talk too much

Good luck !

EDIT: formatting

</comment><comment><USER31> Sounds like your chosen solution (junior developers) doesn't meet your requirement (time- and cost-efficient development).

</comment><comment><USER32> Ability to learn. Which means most of: eagerness, humility/humbleness/not believing they are knuths gift to the programming world, communication which at junior level means ability to listen and ask questions, confidence, that they derive Joy from programming/problem solving.

</comment><comment><USER33> I really don't know.

But, some advice: if you get 400+ applicants again, just throw out all but ~50 without looking at them at all. That's too many to process, any you're wasting too much time trying for find the "best" ones. Randomly limiting your pool will make it easier to make a decision.

Also, I hope you don't go the traditional interview route (ie white boarding). I think more companies should do a "make your own interview process" where the candidates decide what to show off. Maybe that's walking you through a project, some live coding/pair programming, assessing your product, or a presentation on some aspect of technology (like functional programming, databases, security, etc). The one that impresses you the most wins.

<comment><USER34> That sounds more like you're screening for who can market themselves better, not really a skill-based assessment since there's no way to reasonably compare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> You get what you pay for! If you can't afford senior developers, get someone you can train that can listen and has an ability to hone coding chops. Take on an intern, or maybe a contractor... as a matter of fact, why do you look into having a recruiter do this for you??

</comment><comment><USER36> What I want to see in junior developers is simply enthusiasm for programming and their ability to learn. Both are easy to spot by having a nice conversation with them and maybe pairing with them for a few hours.

> we had so many applicants (400+) that it was a tough challenge discerning > the best candidates

You just want good candidates that fit your company. Then you /make/ them the best by teaching and mentoring them.

> I would like to hire senior developers instead, but they are too expensive > for my budget

Sorry to say it but this sounds not like a good place for junior developers. You can't just put them in a senior position and expect results for cheaper payroll costs. They need to learn (experienced developers need to learn too, but juniors even more so).

</comment><comment><USER37> You have to realize that hiring a junior developer means you will be spending a good portion of your time and energy on mentorship and compensating for their lack of skill and experience. This is an investment and one well worth making both for the mentee and mentor. You want your senior developers to be spending some portion of their time with the junior developers on your team. If you're not prepared to make this investment don't hire a junior developer: get a competent contractor instead.

If you are willing to proceed the next step is setting up your hiring process. I've used a loose, informal specification for a rather simple program as a take-home exercise. It takes around 3-4 hours to complete for a reasonably- experience programmer and can be completed in any language that the applicant is most comfortable with. When designing this specification I made sure that the language was clear and intentionally left some requirements vague. It is intended to be representative of a typical specification for a low-risk feature or system that you might encounter on the job: a few paragraphs detailing the problem, a description of the API, the inputs, the expected outputs, etc.

What's interesting about using this exercise with junior developers is seeing how they interpret the specification. Most developers out of school aren't trained to think in terms of specifications, requirements, etc. Your junior applicants will typically write some code to start solving the problem. They will skip translating requirements from the specification into tests. They won't think of the bounds on inputs or outputs. Often they will start writing code and implement the first thing that "works" (for some definition of "works").

This is wonderful! It gives you plenty of leading questions when you invite them in for a code review session. A good, naive solution is great. It gives you opportunities to talk about edge cases, tests, assumptions, invariants, performance, etc. The more you can get them to talk the better!

If they seem enthusiastic and are capable of taking a leading question and connecting the dots then you have a great candidate.

</comment><comment><USER38> I agree with the other comments, but in addition, interviewing ten people a day is far too many. Either the interview process was too short to truly gauge a persons ability, or you're stretching yourself so thin that someone would be to be a programming god to stand out.

As others have said, you should create a take-home test for someone to complete on GitHub. Have them fork a repo, pass some coding test, and submit a pull request into your repo. That will reduce the number significantly, and you'll know with some certainty that the person you're speaking to has some basic skill. The interview should purely be an exercise in seeing if they are a good fit, and to gauge where they are in their journey.

</comment><comment><USER39> I strongly suggest finding another field more suitable for you.

Perhaps something in the fast food industry.

</comment><comment><USER40> You want people who learn fast: you don't have to explain everything three times. It's not easy to detect this during an interview though.

The way I would do it is to focus on side-activities. If a hardware engineer built a website for a side-project, that's a good sign. Anything that shows success outside their expected space. Smart, fast learners tend to pick up random knowledge and apply it quickly and successfully.

People who need hand-holding tend to know their core topic well enough (they spent years in college refining those skills), but are having difficulty learning anything outside those core topics.

</comment><comment><USER41> I've hired quite a lot of programmers over the years, but I'm Danish, and around 95% of our junior applicants and 100% of the people we interview come with a relevant degree (2.5-5 years) because of our free education system. So it may be a tad different in the US where a lot of people are autodidact.

Basically I look for the following things.

* Do I think the candidate has the capacity to learn. Every hire we've taken straight out of college has been fairly useless for the first 3 months. They typically know how to write software, but they have no idea how to do it in an actual production setting. We've had hires who couldn't publish and deploy a simple asp mvc site to an IIS for instance. I typically judge this by what projects they've done during their education (and their free time) and what sort of roles they've filled in those projects.

* Does the person have the minimum technical skills required to learn. I don't care if you can write a double linked list on a whiteboard, but I do want you to be able to do simple things, know about best practices and preferably things like SOLID. We'll typically ask what people think about test-first-development as an example, and we'll try to provoke an answer that doesn't come from a text book to see whether or not they actually have an opinion and knowledge on the matter or they're just telling us what they think we want to hear.

* Do I think the candidate is capable of failing, accepting responsibility for the mistake and learning from it. It's perfectly fine to screw up, we all do it, but people who don't admit when they do it are dangerous.

* Communication skills. I need candidates to be able to explain what they are doing to their grandmothers without getting angry. Both because the business end won't understand otherwise but mainly because politeness and a well mannered temper is more valuable than gold.

* Do I think the person will be a strategically good fit in the team.

* Does the team think the person will be a good fit.

* Does it seem like the candidate wants to work for us. The best employees are the ones who value and take pride in their work. I don't want people to be blind zealots, but I want them to be able to tell their friends they're making a difference.

Often we end up with a few who are strong technically and a few who are strong in personality and willingness. We always go with the latter. Obviously I can't tell you about what we've missed out on, but I can tell you that we've always had successful hires which is pretty important, because the most expensive you can make as a manager is hiring someone who doesn't work out.

<comment> le-mark > Often we end up with a few who are strong technically and a few who are > strong in personality and willingness. We always go with the latter.

Ever a candidate who's both? Great response, thanks!

<comment><USER41> Rarely. I'm from the public sector (a municipality) and the brutal truth is that we typically don't attract the best of the best. We don't pay enough and our reputation isn't great so we typically only attract the best of the best if they are having children (benefits) or come with some sort of ideology for wanting public service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I actually wrote about this fairly recently, although it's aimed squarely at Android developers: [https://proandroiddev.com/what-i-look-for-in-a-junior- androi...](https://proandroiddev.com/what-i-look-for-in-a-junior-android- dev-3581ebd9f213)

tl;dr: I want someone who is excited by the platform and has shown a willingness to learn, as well as some autodidactic tendencies.

</comment><comment><USER43> Junior devs are a radically different value proposition than senior devs. You have to turn them into good developers, they will all look like garbage on paper if you are expecting someone who can walk in and do the job. Curiosity, tenacity, demonstrable coding experience (even if it's side projects), and interests/hobbies outside of tech seem to be the best predictors for us in hiring juniors.

</comment><comment><USER44> Another approach is to hire freelancers and convert them into juniors if you like them enough. Juniors are an investment. Freelancers may secretly be seniors at junior salary.

Also when hiring programmers, you should be doing so from programmer communities (GitHub, SO) rather than job sites. Even FB groups will give you better odds. 400+ applicants sounds like you're hiring from the wrong places.

</comment><comment><USER45> >Preferably, I would like to hire senior developers instead, but they are too expensive for my budget.

This feels like a red flag. Do you have existing, more senior, people that can oversee the work? If so, perhaps that's a valid trade-off. It won't reduce the overall cost though, just the monthly burn. More junior means slower delivery, or less quality. There's no free lunch.

</comment><comment><USER46> Use HackerRank. Make a test that require them to write a program to print numbers from 1 to 10 then from 10 to 1.

That should filter 2/3 of the candidates.

</comment><comment><USER47> Smart, curious about code quality, no ego, hungry, and at least moderately experienced with the languages they'll need to use. You can't afford someone you need to spend months training and can't risk someone that has to break bad habits they learned cowboying shit. Vet that they're hungry to get good and smart enough to eventually be good.

</comment><comment><USER48> Look for applicants who have gotten involved in technical projects and clubs in college. Thats always where we find our best interns.

</comment><comment><USER49> TL;DR: Junior Developers != Cheaper Developers.

You have to put time and money into training them; it's a responsibility more than an easy buck.

</comment><comment><USER50> Most comments already get to the point. You can not hire a junior with senior or intermediate level skills.

It seems like you are in the same shoes as me at the moment. What I suggest you to do is to prepare a small test tasks they can do at home. This saves up time for you going through unnecessary extra interview processes and also shows some of their dedication and skills. I am not saying you should not have interviews, but it is hard to filter candidates just by resumes (and you can not have 400+ interviews).

Answering your question, I usually look out for the following:

1\. After I sent the candidates the test task, but before they finish it (NOTE: I don't know they progress on it):

\- Do they let me know when they have time to do the task (in case they are not able to it immediately) or do they just let time pass by.

\- Do they come back with questions if they hit a wall somewhere.

\- Do they let me know if they are not able to do the task (for whatever reason). At this point they are obviously out of the process, but they might re-apply at a later time.

\- Communication is key at this level of the application process.

2\. After I received the results of the test task

\- Obviously did they finish the task in a reasonable quality. There are most likely mistakes in it, but this is irrelevant in case the general quality of the result is ok and the solution works as expected.

\- The quality also reflects on how much time they spent testing their own solution.

\- Did they finish all the sub-tasks (usually I also ask for documentation and tests) or did they just skip those.

\- Did they try to find quick and dirty solutions or did they try to implement things properly (and most likely spent more time on it).

The best developer you can hire is somebody who does communicate pro-actively, is dedicated and develops maintainable solutions over "easy" ones. How much time they spent on the task and how proficient they were with the tools at hand (programming languages/frameworks) is not relevant in my opinion. If they were unfamiliar with the programming language for example and they spent the time during that task to learn part of it and delivered a proper solution with it, they got all my respect and I would be very likely to hire them.

You will also have to spent time reviewing the test task results, but I think this is less time-consuming than interviews. More than half of the candidates will probably jump off before you even see the results. For the other half you will learn how to distinguish a good from a bad solution quickly.

</comment><comment><USER51> Curiousity, willingness to get hands dirty and ability to be introspective.

</comment><comment><USER52> ask them to do a small sample project. something that takes maybe 4 hours, and demonstrates the type of skills you are looking for. give them about a week.

</comment><comment><USER53> By far the best quality is being a quick learner.

</comment><comment><USER54> Find a smaller number of experienced people.

</comment><comment><USER55> High SAT / ACT scores lol

With 400 apps you'll need to send them a quickie programming challenge to thin the herd.</comment>


US Export Regulations on Crypto Eased - <AUTHOR> http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2011/01/07/2010-32803/publicly-available-mass-market-encryption-software-and-other-specified-publicly-available-encryption

<comment><USER2> This is interesting. If I'm reading it correctly, it continues to give open source crypto an advantage over commercial crypto, since commerical crypto is not publicly available and therefore sellers have to do some due diligence about their customers to make sure they're not selling to e.g. a North Korean government front.

I don't understand why the BIS can't say the cat's out of the bag, and deregulate encryption software completely. If North Korean and Iran and Libya aren't using good encryption, it's not because they lack access to it.

If a company can make money selling crypto to regimes like that, what's the problem? Money flows into crypto companies' pockets at the expense of idiots in those regimes who could be implementing their own systems based on open source crypto software, without paying companies from imperialist, corrupt, decadent western societies a dime.

Why is the state department opposed to letting U.S. companies make money off of enemy regimes?

<comment><USER3> When President Clinton was asked by a reporter why he had Cuban cigars, he responded, "Don't think of it as supporting the Cuban economy, instead, think of it as burning their crops."

<comment><USER4> Actually Reagan's secretary of state Alexander Haig. It totally sounds like something an old conservative ex-army guy would say, doesn't it?

<comment><USER3> Yes, Haig was reported to have said it, possibly first. There are similar claims for Clinton, Jack Kennedy[1], and Arnold Schwarzenegger having said it.

[1] <http://www.extremeink.com/jokes/2008_08_01_archive.html>

<comment><USER4> No doubt countless Cuban smokers have said it since Mort Sahl attributed to him, because it's a great line. I can't see Clinton, famously circumspect in such matters, cracking that joke _to a reporter_ , though.

I like the Kennedy misattribution better, but the attested anecdotes about Jack Kennedy and Cuban cigars are pretty great too:

<http://cubanmadecigars.com/kennedy.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does this mean iOS developers can finally sell apps that use HTTPS without filling that forms?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've sent a support request to Apple as soon as I heard the news, asked if there are any changes with regards to this. I'll post the reply once they answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got non-answer:

Thank you for contacting Apple Developer Support regarding the iOS Developer Program.

Developers should be testing and developing their apps in line with the Program License Agreement and the App Store Review Guidelines.

Please know that you will also be presented a copy of the Program License Agreement during the enrollment process.

Should you have any questions or concerns, we request that you review the iOS Developer Program License Agreement details with your own legal counsel.

If you are not yet a member of one of our Apple Developer Programs and are interested in finding out more about our programs, please visit our web site at:

<[http://developer.apple.com>](http://developer.apple.com>);

Thank you for interested in our programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > This action will not result in the decontrol of source code classified under > ECCN 5D002

> because, once it is "publicly available," it is, by definition, available > for download by any end user without restriction, removing it from the > jurisdiction of the EAR will have no effect on export control policy.

To me, the above looks like double-speak. Hopefully grellas or someone legally trained will chime in on what the announcement _really_ means.

<comment><AUTHOR> Full quote:

\--

"This action will not result in the decontrol of source code classified under ECCN 5D002, but it will result in a simplification of the regulatory provisions for publicly available mass market software and specified encryption software in object code."

\--

ECCN 5A002 is "software". This simplifies provisions for "publicly available mass market software".

<comment><USER3> And "simplification" means what exactly? --My main point.

The real trouble is, unless these statements are very clear in the legal sense, some poor bastard might unintentionally become the poster child of bad litigation/direction. Even unintentional violation of the export laws is a federal offense, and must be taken very seriously.

<comment><USER6> It is already vanishingly unlikely that you would be prosecuted for "exporting" crypto software. I shipped commercial software in the mid-90's, when we actually had to fill out forms to export code that used (eg) Blowfish to protect secrets, and I didn't even _remember_ that until this announcement.

My understanding of this announcement is that it simply makes official what was already near-universal in practice: it's safe to export any non-classified crypto code. (What's "classified"? You'd know it if you had it. Classified crypto has more to do with the setting in which its used than the actual algorithms in use.)

<comment><USER3> I completely agree on the "vanishingly unlikely prosecution" and "accepting the obvious" of code already being available. Off the top of my head, I can think of only one person who has been in this particular hot water over the years; Phil Zimmerman for his PGP work [1].

For me at least, it's not a matter of whether or not I will get in trouble, instead, it's whether or not I can get in trouble?

It's just like copyright infringement; you can probably get away with it, but it's still illegal.

The question now is if it's now legal to export crypto code?

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann#Criminal_invest...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann#Criminal_investigation_by_US_Customs)

<comment><USER6> Back in the '90s, there was all manner of drama surround the "export" of RSA code. People got it patented, or mailed it printed on paper, or had "non- exportable" T-shirts printed (I bought one of those T-shirts in 1995; this was before SSL, so I had to send the vendor the bank account information off the bottom of a check).

If those rules were still germane, just note that they've been violated many hundreds of times on Hacker News.

I'm glad the government clarified these rules, but there's no genuine practical impact to this announcement.

<comment><USER3> I believe the RSA code was, initially at least, under a "sealed" patent?

The PGP-based drama of printing books of the source code to get copyright protections, and then exporting the books rather than exporting the machine readable code, was just ridiculous. The "International Version" of PGP (www.pgpi.org) was intended to deal with both the ITAR export restrictions and also the RSA patents. Fun times, but a real PITA.

Just for clarity, you're referring to 56-bit versus 128-bit SSL debacle of the mid 90's.

Getting back to the real problem... how the heck is an open source developer in the US to know if the crypto code he's written can be legally exported?

Though the announcement seems friendly, it is (intentionally?) not clear. There is no mention of the ITAR restrictions being lifted. Also, there's always the issue of unknowing reinvention of something classified.

Other than stating the status quo of crypto code being currently exported, the announcement does not really offer any legal protection for exporting crypto code.

Am I just reading the announcement wrong?

Am I wrong in expecting the ITAR restriction being removed?

<comment><USER7> Re: "how the heck is an open source developer in the US to know if the crypto code he's written can be legally exported?"

tptacek: "My understanding of this announcement is that it simply makes official what was already near-universal in practice: it's safe to export any non-classified crypto code. "

<comment><USER6> 'jcr is from OpenBSD, a project that did go way, way out of its way to stay away from US export regulations. I can understand why they'd be picky about this. I'm just saying, if you're not from OpenBSD, this is largely a solved problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Federal Law: catching up to a decade ago, yet again.</comment>


Optalysys has 340-gigaflop optical computing system in works, exaflops to follow - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/187746-by-2020-you-could-have-an-exascale-speed-of-light-optical-computer-on-your-desk <comment><USER2> They are specifically targeting CFD applications, and so the cited FLOPs count might be misleading (but I don't know enough about optical computing to say for sure) I will comment on why I think this is so.

If this tool can perform very fast fourier transforms then it will benefit many simulation codes which rely on an approximation technique known as spectral approximation. In that case the huge FLOP/s count will only be realized in "high orders," that is when these spectral methods are pushed to their limits - in which case much existing research today breaks down and the methods can simply become unusable by e.g. yielding a 'theoretically' invertible matrix that has a numerically infinite condition number; no amount of fourier transforms can dig you out of that hole. This problem is not fully understood in the spectral method literature, and it rears its face in many different ways depending on the problem context.

GPUs have a similar problem, their ability to churn out dense linear algebra operations at high scale is so good that the vast majority of algorithms have a huge memory bottleneck, not a FLOP/s bottleneck. The result is people rarely see the insane promised 100X speedup of their simulation codes because they rarely are one massive dense linear algebra operation such as a matrix-matrix multiply, but rather a combination of small dense linear algebra ops + memory bound operations like gathers and scatters. Ironically spectral methods also work very well on the GPU in high orders, because they effectively replace memory bound operations with dense linear algebra operations - which the GPU eats for breakfast, but again: high orders -> still an unsolved area of simulation mathematics; a lot of things happen which we don't have the answer for and they frequently disrupt the method from being applicable.

As someone who uses spectral methods every day I would love to see this optical device work and therefore hopefully really push research hard on resolving some of its problems. I suspect its initial use will be limited to specialized problems, however.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bosons have a wonderful advantage over fermions. Whereas electrons cannot occupy the same space at the same time, photons will happily overlap. So, speaking in broad strokes here, optical computers can certainly have a higher computational/informational density. However, Optalysys's marketing is disingenuous when they use the phrases like "computing at the speed of light." Present day electron based CPUs already compute at the speed of light!

In other words, an optical computer cannot move data from one point to another any faster than a traditional computer. The latency is the same no matter what you're computing with.

However, the ability of optical computers to have a higher computing density (computations per area of space) may negate that issue. Whatever the optical equivalent of RAM would be, it can be theoretically smaller, and thus help to relieve some of the latency issue.

Also interesting about optical computers is that they can perform convolutions for "free". Present day computers are abysmal at convolutions. This is helpful to image processing, graphics rendering, and neural networks.

<comment><USER4> > Present day electron based CPUs already compute at the speed of light!

No, speed is still below _c_ , which is why on high-frequency signal routes on PCBs the traces must be length-matched, sometimes down to tenths of millimeters.

<comment><USER5> Propagation velocity in copper is within a factor of 2 or so of c; you would have to length-match even at vp=c, given a short enough clock period.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title of this article is: "By 2020, you could have an exascale speed-of- light optical computer on your desk"

We might be able to rent one and have access to it remotely. Right now it's still in the theory phase, I'm not sure the author of this article realizes that 2020 is less than 6 years away.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm completely clueless about anything relevant to this topic, but that video blew my mind. Human achievements are incredible.</comment>


A List of Time Tracking Softwares with Reviews and Pricing - <AUTHOR> http://timetrackerlist.com/#top-pick <comment><USER2> Good resource! Quite a lot of them have sprung up lately. Have only tried a few of them though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quite extensive list :)</comment>


The Virtues of Monitoring, Redux - <AUTHOR> http://www.paperplanes.de/2013/1/10/virtues-of-monitoring-redux.html

<comment><USER2> I somehow missed Riemann, that looks super neat. The same stream parsing of reconnoiter but with clojure instead of esper.

I think I'd also want to stuff all the raw events into a log (or cassandra maybe?); going back in time with only RRD-like storage loses a lot of data.</comment>


Simple 8-bit Assembler Simulator in Javascript - <AUTHOR> http://schweigi.github.io/assembler-simulator <comment><USER2> 'Tis the season for javascript emulators, I guess. I've seen at least 3 or 4 up on HN in the last week. Cool stuff.

<comment><USER3> And another: [http://tjdetwiler.github.io/hcf/](http://tjdetwiler.github.io/hcf/)

It's a shame 0x10c isn't a thing anymore.

<comment> s-macke I can understand the developer why they cancelled the project. This is a game only hackers would like. The big question is still, how to learn programming like it would be a game. The best example in my opinion is the game spacechem in my opinion. [http://www.spacechemthegame.com/](http://www.spacechemthegame.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related: [https://github.com/samsaga2/js80](https://github.com/samsaga2/js80)

I'm writing a z80 assembler for nodejs.

<comment><USER5> Let me know if you ever write an emulator.

<comment><USER4> There is already one. A ZX Spectrum emulator [[http://jsspeccy.zxdemo.org/](http://jsspeccy.zxdemo.org/)]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is not an assembler simulator (i'd enjoy having one, though), it's a 8-bit computer simulator that includes an assembler.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool project, I've been thinking about writing one for MIPS (I'm taking a computer architecture class this quarter :))

<comment><USER8> I did a very minimal one for MIPS, based on SPIM and written in Haskell. It was a fun project in learning and abstracting patterns. Highly recommended, IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> this thing is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER10> How does it vibrate my android device on step?</comment>


Orchestra's Mailbox app now reservable in the App Store - <AUTHOR> http://thetechblock.com/mailbox-app-now-available/

<comment><USER2> Now I get to see what's stronger - my desire to try Mailbox or the fingernails-on-chalkboard irritation of an app on my phone that doesn't do anything.

<comment><USER3> You can delete it and it will still hold your place in line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Downloaded it, couldn't use it, wondered why a 3rd party needs push access servers for a mail client... became suspicious... deleted it... probably not reinstalling it.

<comment><USER5> If they didn't have push access and servers, how would they let you know when you had new mail? Third party iOS apps can't poll for new mail, so remote notifications are the only way!

<comment><USER6> +1. Push notification is the only way to notify about new emails. The trade- off is that you are gonna have to store user credentials on server. That's the reason why Sparrow didn't implement push notification.

<comment><USER5> And even then, I bet they're using [https://developers.google.com/google- apps/gmail/oauth_overvi...](https://developers.google.com/google- apps/gmail/oauth_overview) which means you could revoke the oauth token at any time from your Google account!

<comment><USER6> Looks good. So you can store oauth on server, which should be safer. Is it possible for an oauth client to "suicide" on its permission? I'm thinking, in case a third-party service is comprised, they can just ask the oauth server to abandon their permission to avoid further loss for users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> At it's current rate of fulfilling the queue, I can expect to be invited in about 30-50 days. Looks like a decent app, but no thanks. If this is a marketing ploy, it might backfire on them.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm really regretting not wanting to give my phone number to some random startup the first time I saw Mailbox. I did end up signing up a month or two later but now there are 250,000 people in front of me...

Now the question is, how will they make money?

<comment><USER9> I gave them my number a while back but never heard anything. Now there are 250k people in front of me. I guess it doesn't matter too much since my gmail accounts aren't the ones I primarily use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Verge have posted a review of the app, claiming it has, "just fixed email on the iPhone." - [http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/7/3961544/mailbox-app-for- iph...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/7/3961544/mailbox-app-for-iphone-inbox- unchained)

It will be interesting to see whether it lives up to the hype, but everything I've seen so far points in that direction.

However, despite registering within ~10 minutes of the reservation announcement, there are apparently 16,222 people in front of me in the queue.

<comment><USER11> I registered around 1:35 PM EST and there was ~250,000 people ahead of me. Looks like a lot of traction. You are, of course, giving this company access to your Gmail, but perhaps that's a small price to pay?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm pretty anxious to try the app out, luckily I have a low number in the queue, but the first thing that happened when I opened the application was that it asked me to share it with friends... How can they expect me to endorse something that I am still waiting in line for?

</comment><comment><USER13> Wonder how Apple approved this app. It doesn't do anything (I mean, anything) if you forgot about the "get in the line" moment. I'm sure once you get access to it maybe it's the coolest but still wonder how Apple approved the app with this type of hack built-in. 274,000+ people in front...I might eventually forget about this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks good, though I'm not sure how I feel about this queue system. I understand that they're claiming its to make sure they can handle the numbers but I can't help but think it might also be a clever marketing ploy.

Kind of like how when no one could get on Google+ everyone wanted to be on Google+.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not sure if you guys know, but Eddie Cue's son works at Orchestra. It wouldn't surprise me if Apple ends up buying this company. I think they should. Their Mail.app client feels so far behind compared to Mailbox.

<comment><USER16> From what I can see of Mailbox, it looks fantastic- but it's not for all users. It's adapting e-mail to a specific usage pattern that many of us will have, but few non-professionals would use. So I don't think it would replace Mail.app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interview with Founder:

<http://thetechblock.com/interview-mailbox-gentry-underwood/>

</comment><comment><USER17> I hate that it is only available for iOS 6. I can't upgrade from 5.1 because my Mac is too old to use the newer versions of Xcode.

<comment><USER18> You are running a computer that is more than six years old and complaining that you can't use an app that came out today?

<comment><USER17> Unless my computer can run iOS, I'm confused by your comment.

<comment><USER19> He probably deploys apps from Xcode to his device. Since his computer can't handle the iOS6-compatible Xcode, he has chosen to not update the device to iOS6.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I signed up long ago, but apparently lost my reservation number. Guess I'll have to get in line with everyone else...

</comment><comment><USER21> I hope that in time we will be able to use other email accounts than Gmail.

</comment><comment><USER22> iTunes preview link: <https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mailbox/id576502633?mt=8>

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone think that the reservation numbers might be inflated?

</comment><comment><USER24> Not available outside the US?

<comment><USER10> I downloaded it from the UK store, but I had to download it through the link in this post, as the Apple search cache probably hasn't updated yet on the App Store.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A word of warning - if you have a reservation, make sure you don't accidentally click on the first button in the app by mistake. Once you do, there's no way to get back to the first screen to enter your reservation code, even if you uninstall and reinstall the app.

<comment><USER5> I uninstalled and reinstalled the app and was able to use my reservation code after I remember I had it. So was my friend! The button to use the code is kind of hard to see

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I agree I was stupid to have forgotten that the code was not in email but in a text message (not finding anything in the email made me give up and get back into the reservation line). But it is pretty idiotic to not allow us to use our reservation code once we realize mistakes like that and find our codes. And now I have 2 pairs of reservation-private codes sitting idle in my text message inbox.

<comment><USER27> Tap and hold the mailbox icon above the numbers. (Can't remember where I saw that, but it does bring up the code entry thing again)

<comment><USER26> wait.. so reservation/private codes just allow you to jump ahead in line and that's it? no immediate access? :(</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to implement a fair bonus system? - <AUTHOR> One, where the people contributing the most gets rewarded, robust in face of minmaxing and manipulation, facilitates cooperation over competition, does not breed bad blood and jealousy and (obviously) motivates people to perform better? <comment><USER2> Bengt Holmström and Oliver Hart were awarded Nobel price in Economics in their work in contract theory 2016. That includes performance-based pay.

Here is short introduction to the subject:

[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/10/pe...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/10/performance- pay-nobel.html)

Nobel lecture: [https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/holmstrom- lecture...](https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/holmstrom-lecture.pdf)

This is super interesting subject.</comment>


OneTune – Open Free Alternative to Spotify - <AUTHOR> http://onetune.fm/

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting, but I don't want to submit a password over an unencrypted wire.</comment>