Why Working at Google Is Not My Dream Job Anymore - <AUTHOR> http://42gems.com/blog/?p=906 <comment><USER2> Google is like a corporate supermodel. Their brand is legendary, like Apple or Facebook. They have so many guys to choose from, and they can afford to be very picky.

Fortunately for those of us who do not work for corporate supermodels, being married to the supermodel is not always the heaven one imagines. Maybe it has its upsides, but a lot of the allure is just image and marketing, and the reality is much less pleasant than the fantasy.

If working for Google or Facebook or Apple is important to someone, then they have to take whatever crap these companies dish out. But personally, I'd much rather work for the NEXT Google than the current one. And if I was going to work for the current Google, I'd much rather do so by way of them paying me millions of dollars to buy the amazing product I created, rather than by way of begging and hoping for a job. Guido van Rossum and Ken Thompson created amazing things, and because of that, Google hired them.

Therefore, instead of seeking a job at Google directly, a more profitable approach might be to immediately start creating whatever you really care about, and let the question of what company creates your W-2 take care of itself. This is no guarantee that you'll eventually work for Google, but it is the most likely path to eventually being legitimately in the company of the van Rossums and Thompsons of the world, and it will probably be a lot of fun getting there.

<comment><USER3> > a more profitable approach might be to immediately start creating whatever > you really care about, and let the question of what company creates your W-2 > take care of itself.

See, there's a fallacy in this way of thinking that many miss:

Creating something doesn't pay the bills. Getting a successful idea off the ground takes a lot of time (and connections). Hopefully everybody here does have a job, but if you don't, then I'm sorry, but I have to say this to you, please don't spend all your time working on your billion dollar app idea -- go get a real job. And then once you do have a paying job, if you really want to spend your remaining free time working on an idea, understand that will suck and be hard.

> I'd much rather work for the NEXT Google than the current one.

I agree with this.

I'm not saying you shouldn't work on your own ideas -- I certainly do -- I'm just saying you sound so idealistic -- do you have any idea the real world's a whole lot crueler.

BTW: Just got rejected from a big tech company after 2-3 months of interviewing. OP I know your pain.

<comment><USER4> Mieh, network, freelance and learn to love Montreal :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _I still remember being in high school and reading about how amazing [...] their free cafeterias were, their company gyms, massage chairs, and on-site laundry machines_

 _What computer science undergraduate didn 't dream of working at Google? To work at the same company with brilliant minds like Guido van Rossum, Leonard Kleinrock, and Ken Thompson?_

I think these reasons are likely to result in disappointment anyway. The first set are designed to keep you at work for as long as possible, and the latter will, sadly, have next to zero impact on your actual working life.

<comment><USER6> "The first set are designed to keep you at work for as long as possible..."

Jesus Christ, when will this meme die? Google doesn't provide those things "to keep you at work for as long as possible," they provide them because the company believes in the simple idea that: happy employees == productive employees.

I can't possibly understand why people think Googlers are overworked. I work between 25-30 hours a week. Most of peers work 30-35. Nobody I know works more than 40 here. (In NYC!)

There are plenty of faults to be found with this company, like any other, but this is absolutely not one of them.

<comment><USER7> After my experience at Google I'd recommend that any company of sufficient size provide tasty convenient lunch for free. It's a huge productivity boost. At other companies, I've seen people waste an hour and a half every day assembling people to go out for lunch, order, wait, figure out how to split up the bill, drive back. Much easier to just take that off people's minds.

Dinner and breakfast aren't as useful to provide and I don't think comparatively many Googlers take advantage of them (though breakfast is nice if you have a very long commute.) I did when I was young and single, but no longer. However, I'm virtually certain that providing lunch is a very cost effective way of getting more work done and is a win/win for everyone.

<comment><USER8> I seem to recall the budget at Google for food service was $15 per person per meal. And the snacks and drinks in the micro-kitchens cost something like $5 per day; they used to cost more, but they also used to be a lot better.

Of course, Google provides really elaborate meals. You could probably get the cost down to something like $5 per meal, but it would mean fast-food-grade meals.

<comment><USER9> > I seem to recall the budget at Google for food service > was $15 per person > per meal ...You could probably get > the cost down to something like $5 per > meal, but it > would mean fast-food-grade meals.

If the $15/meal figure is accurate and includes all expenses related to serving the meals (incl. paying kitchen staff and everything) then the food would only be a fraction of those costs. Going from serving fresh food to serving the cheapest possible garbage might only take the cost from $15 down to $10 or something like that.

<comment><USER8> Tom Wolfe wrote an interesting passage about old-time food service at Intel ([http://web.stanford.edu/class/e140/e140a/content/noyce.html](http://web.stanford.edu/class/e140/e140a/content/noyce.html)):

"At Intel lunch had a different look to it. You could tell when it was noon at Intel, because at noon men in white aprons arrived at the front entrance gasping from the weight of the trays they were carrying. The trays were loaded down with deli sandwiches and waxed cups full of drinks with clear plastic tops, with globules of Sprite or Diet Shasta sliding around the tops on the inside. That was your lunch. You ate some sandwiches made of roast beef or chicken sliced into translucent rectangles by a machine in a processing plant and then reassembled on the bread in layers that gave off dank whiffs of hormones and chemicals, and you washed it down with Sprite or Diet Shasta, and you sat amid the particle-board partitions and metal desktops, and you kept your mind on your committee meeting. That was what Noyce did, and that was what everybody else did."

Surely well below $10 per person for that level of service. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I sympathize with you. My Google interview process took over 6 months, consisted of over a dozen interviews, including going to their campus twice, and resulted in a no-offer with no explanation.

This was the second time I was interviewed by Google.

They have some good people, but they have become bureaucratic and they really don't care that much about what you, as a potential recruit think.

I complained to some friends of mine that work at Google and they were furious at how I was treated. They talked to some people internally. They said they would fix things, but I think its just a huge problem.

They are hiring a lot, and their HR processes aren't very good.

They have some good teams though.

<comment><USER11> I know someone who made it through 8 interviews before being told no. I also know 2 others that were hired but have no idea how long it took them. I still wonder what it is that makes us want to give up so much of our own time for their interview process. Do they really treat employees _that_ much better than other companies? I bet there are a lot of startups that would make me just as happy. Is it just for name recognition? Maybe they make the processes arbitrary difficult so that only those who really want to work for Google actually follow through?

<comment><USER12> "Maybe they make the processes arbitrary difficult so that only those who really want to work for Google actually follow through?"

I think it comes down to the attitude that they'd rather have a bunch of false negatives than one false positives. Since there is extremely high supply of qualified applicants they probably don't feel like their bizarre hiring process hurts them at all. Some people will get turned off by their hiring processes, but for everyone one of those 10 times as many will jump through those hoops.

Over time I think Google's hiring processes absolutely do hurt them. The best of the best in the Computer Science world have many, many opportunities and they simply don't have to put up with nonsense. If Google is one of 10 suitors for an exceptional candidate and they take 6-8 months to make a decision, that candidate may already be long gone, just like the OP.

For now I think Google can get away with it but I feel like in a few years we're going to be seeing articles about Google's 'brain drain'.

<comment><USER13> It may already be happening... where if not on HN would you find a community with a bunch of the best of the best in software? And when was the last time we saw a post anywhere on here about somebody having a positive experience interviewing or working for Google? Or anywhere else on the internet for that matter?

I can see how it's difficult to screen out on the employer side when you're that big and prominent, but the first people who get screened out with this kind of stuff are the people with skills and self-respect.

I'm probably far from being a top-tier software person, but I'd like to think I've learned to respect myself. There are way too many good companies with competitive pay and sane hiring processes to put up with being jerked around by Google, especially when the result is probably to be just another cog in the Google machine. The benefits may be nice, but money will buy you all of the laptops and gourmet lunches you want. It won't buy you respect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When I interviewed at Google I was able to bypass the screening and hear back three days after the onsite. Everything from initial phone call to final decision took three weeks.

These were the steps I took.

1) Apply through internal referral. Ask multiple people to refer you. 2) Ask your friends to check up on the application process. Make sure they tell the recruiters you are further along with with Facebook, Twitter, or some other competitor. 3) When the recruiter contacts you. Thank them, tell them how much you want to work at Google, and then mention your tight deadline due to offers from other companies.

And I had a wonderful experience at Google because of two interviewers in particular.

1) I failed both questions from an interviewer. They were easy questions and I managed to crash and burn spectacularly. I don't understand how my interviewer managed to remain friendly and treated me with respect the whole time.

2) On the last round, I did well enough to score a 3/4\. Yet during our chat, we talked about my other options and concluded that I should go join Redfin because developers can make a bigger impact at a smaller company. I appreciated his honesty.

<comment><USER15> You can generalize this:

Tips to outmaneuver any bureaucracy: know/bribe people on the inside to help you.

<comment><USER16> I understand this is a meta comment, but why is everyone (including the blogger) using the word bureaucracy? When did Google turn into a government?

<comment><USER17> "In modern parlance, bureaucracy refers to the administrative system governing any large institution."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy)

<comment><USER16> Fair enough, it just felt weird in this context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> People often ask why Google's hiring process is so Byzantine. It's a company that likes to innovate, measure statistics, and treat their employees well, so why do they harass people they might want to hire?

Here's my theory: it may have grown by chance, but it's still there by intention.

Google can't put you through twelve weeks of basic training to break you down and form you into their image. Instead, they give everyone a shared hard experience, at the end of which the successful ones have been welcomed to the ranks of the elect, and the chaff discarded. Since the process produced you, the new Googler, and clearly that's good, then the process is good, even though it was hard.

Now, everybody who stops to think about it rather than feel it will come to the conclusion that there must have been plenty of the could-be elect among the chaff. But if you aren't asked to focus on a question, you probably won't think much about it.

<comment><USER19> Most people that interview at Google don't have the OPs experience. It's just that those who do are more likely to get noticed.

Your theory is wrong.

<comment><USER20> I've heard the gist of what OP experienced enough times (including from people I know personally in addition to the ones who blogged about it) that it can't be that rare, though I'll grant it still might not be the norm.

My own unsubstantiated theory is that Google is okay with primarily hiring through acquisition and views direct hires as a secondary stream of potential employees, only greasing the byzantine wheels they've stuck on direct hires when someone inside with a significant amount of internal political capital makes a direct recommendation.

In any case, I'd say the luster of Google jobs has worn off in the minds of a lot of people and it isn't really seen as much different than working for any other big tech company these days. There are some teams within the company (just like there are some teams within Microsoft) that people would love to work for, but the idea of just "working for Google" on its own is no longer particularly desirable, IMO.

<comment><USER19> The vast majority of Google's hires are not through acquisition.

Your unsubstantiated theory is wrong too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had the same experience - but with Shopify.

I knew someone who was hired, given a letter of offer and attended his first few weeks of training. They walked up to him two weeks later and said we don't actually need your position right now but would you mind waiting until we call to set something up? On top of that, they bungled his pay.

An outlier I thought.

Then I went through the hiring process, nobody knew what anyone was going. I showed up to shadow for a day, nobody knew I was coming despite planning it all out and scheduling the day with a number of different people. I suddenly realized I was overqualified for the job, telling the guy I was shadowing what he needed to do, despite my limited familiarity with the interface.

A few weeks later, after another 3 interviews, they told me I wasn't what they were looking for because I told them I wanted to get out of my current job (one that had broken some promises to me)

Another person I went through the hiring process with was never actually onboarded. Like my other friend, she was given a letter of offer, and everything sort of fell apart at the end of the day.

<comment><USER22> Sorry to hear that. Went through similar crap with them. Was not impressed since I had worked with a few of the people they did hire for other roles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There's a really interesting presumption in some of the comments on this post. Namely, that getting the job after an interview is the default outcome, and that any other represents an exceptional condition.

In every place that I have worked, making an offer (and landing the candidate) is the exceptional condition. Each step through the recruiting process (resume submission, one or more phone screens, one or more rounds of interviews, extension of an offer, and negotiation around terms and conditions) results in fewer and fewer candidates. I have no idea what the pass rate for each stage is at a typical high-tech company, but I would guess that it could be between 10% and 15% at best.

In other words, odds are that you are not going to get the job.

Separately, there's no reasonable and legally defensible way to provide official feedback if the interview process results in a no-hire decision. The interview is your chance to put your best foot (brain?) forward. If you got post-interview feedback that said "Your linked-list implementation was O(N __3) and we wanted O(N), " or "Several of your responses were not in harmony with the way that we like to build systems" how would you respond, and how would hiring companies and managers handle the situation with any degree of efficiency? You had your chance (the interview) to make the case.

<comment><USER24> > making an offer (and landing the candidate) is the exceptional condition

> In other words, odds are that you are not going to get the job.

The first is true but it doesn't really imply the second:

In my area, the active jobseeker population for development jobs mostly consists of a gigantic, persistent mass of sub-competent developers (you know if you aren't one) and people who are always on the lookout for something better. Anyone else gets picked up pretty damn quickly. If you're in the latter group, odds are you _are_ going to get an offer (of which you will reject the majority). I suspect companies that think they're being more selective at the hiring stage are probably just being capricious; it's not easy to judge the quality of your own hiring process.

<comment><USER25> "If you're not getting hired, obviously you're just not qualified to work and earn a living." Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I had a similar experience with Microsoft - 8 interviews over a period of 6 months. Two things that were different from the Google experience is that I was kept informed of progress and how it all works, and I did land the job (a better job, so not the one I initially applied for).

All that said, I think it important to have a Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft or Amazon on your résumé. It's definitely not critical, but 5 years at one of these (or similar) gives you credibility out of the gate that you might otherwise need to demonstrate through other means. It greases wheels.

</comment><comment><USER27> You are also older, and maybe realize the free food, stupid chairs, and on site laundry are gimmicks intended to keep you at work as long as possible. It really boils down to salary and tangible benefits such has vacation and healthcare. That free lunch only costs the company $5/day, $1250/year. I'd rather take that in pay.

<comment><USER28> To be fair: free (healthier than fast) food is practically an investment. Healthier people work better, live longer, etc. It's probably worth $1250/year/person just on those grounds, which could be reflected in better pay. (given the wage fixing and other things: it probably isn't. but in principle it's not a pure loss to your paycheck.)

And I'd LOVE to have on-site laundry and/or a shower - then I could bike much harder/further to get to work and not smell like it all day. Not having that means pretty strict pacing / length restrictions, which basically means I lose a large chunk of time that I could be using for exercise.

<comment><USER29> But if it's an investment, it shouldn't be a point to be bragged about to employee candidates -- it's being done to make money, not because it's so great for me. Don't brag to me about that just like you shouldn't brag about how the CFO has done some sweet accounting jiujitsu or whatever.

<comment><USER30> It's not zero-sum. It can be a sound investment for the company and also beneficial to the employee. The company shouldn't tout its good working environment if it positively impacts the bottom line? That's an odd stance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What I found peculiar about Google's application process was that all of the emails from Google's recruiters went straight into Gmail's spam folder.

<comment><USER14> Hey I'm new to HN. Why is your name green?

<comment><USER32> They paid for the HN Gold account package.

EDIT:

Downvoting because you lack a sense of humor, or because you are sad that we don't have such a service yet?

<comment><USER33> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As goes the recruitment, so goes the employment.

Despite the efforts of the Valley's largest companies to "be different, think different, not be evil", etc..., they are human endeavors run by human beings subject to the same natural laws of behavior and organizational psychology as the companies they were once trying to "be different" from.

Your story is no different from the typical story of someone trying for non- trivial employment at IBM, Apple, Microsoft, the Department of Defense, or even Wal-Mart. Except, perhaps, for the free lunches- which you'll be trying to avoid after a few months anyway, unless you have given up any semblance of outside life to join The Party (or The Company).

It is proof that large tech companies, new and old, have not made the type of change that their execs and founders have always trumpeted. They are still subject to the same laws of human behavior and organizational development that affected older companies, the United States, the ancient Greeks, the Catholic Church, etc...

<comment><USER35> > Your story is no different from the typical story of someone trying for non- > trivial employment at IBM, Apple, Microsoft,

I disagree on that last one.

I have interviewed at MS twice, once out of college, and again after I left the company and wanted to go back to lead a team doing some great stuff. Since being hired I have myself been involved in many interview loops.

The interviewing process at Microsoft is _very_ streamlined. If there are a multiple highly qualified candidates for a job it may take 1-2 weeks to get back to you, we naturally want to interview everyone first and then make a decision.

If we encounter a situation where multiple candidates that we want to hire and extra head count exists we may try to hire both, or try to give one of them to another team who does have head count.

The overall idea here is that Microsoft wants to say hire to all exceptional candidates that come our way.

For the majority of interviews however, we can get back to the candidate within a couple of days.

(FWIW I've had the exact same turn around interviewing at Amazon.)

Now part of this is being Microsoft does not have Hiring Committees. This is both good and bad. Some teams do not have a consistent bar for hiring, and MS's interview training class just goes over what we legally are not allowed to say.

The good aspect is that we can be more agile hiring people, and our interview process varies based on teams needs. While we want to always hire with an eye towards future potential and growth, different teams and orgs need different skill sets. A hardware team may want its software engineers to know how to communicate with EEs and Mechanical Engineers, and future growth in that org means being able to stretch across multiple disciplines. In contrast, Azure is going to look more at how well a Dev can live in the world of ops, DB, and their understanding of large scale computing.

The downside is, as mentioned above, that some teams don't hold the same bar on candidates.

Now all this said, I have of course seen MS disqualify very highly qualified candidates for asinine reasons, again this is due to there not being a standardized hiring process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I can sum up the whole article in four words: Google is too big. They have obviously become what they would have despised at the outset: a lumbering bureaucracy.

But I have no interest in being one fifty-thousandth of Google, and to anyone who's on the fence, I'd argue that you'll learn more and wield far more responsibility at a much smaller company.

<comment><USER37> I wish this was studied more. (Or maybe it is, and I don't know about the research.) My theory is that organizations should follow nature. For example, when a cell gets big enough, it divides in two. I wonder if it would make sense to grow a business that way.

<comment><USER38> I think Fog Creek is a good example of this. They recently split Trello off into its own company, and Stack Exchange before that.

<comment><USER37> I also think of George Lucas as a good model, too -- looking at all the things he created that came out of Star Wars (Lucasfilm, ILM, Pixar, THX, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's surprising to see this kind of title from someone who's never worked at Google.

OP seems to be mostly disgruntled by Google's recruiting process, which seems horrendous, to be honest. But just because there is a lot of red tape before you can get a job offer doesn't mean the job will suck.

<comment><USER40> I went through the same thing twice at google, but actually failed the over- the-phone interviews. Bank of America had a firm offer the very next day after the interview. I've been there 4 years, get great vacation amount and benefits (401k match, etc) and it's 20-40 minutes from the house, depending on traffic, instead of in Venice, which would be 1.5 hours. And I get paid well. On top of that, the work is interesting and challenging.

<comment><USER41> Heh, completely opposite experience with BoA for me. Incredibly disorganized interviewers (I was waiting for almost an hour between some interviews), the last 2 out of 5 gave me attitude too. No offer in the end.

Bloomberg was the next place I interviewed at and they had a firm offer that same day (the HR guy was the last person I spoke to) -- I had them wait another 4 days since I had 2 more interviews lined up.

<comment><USER40> You took the Bloomberg offer I assume?

<comment><USER41> I did. One of the other 2 jobs turned out to be completely opposite of what the job offer advertised (consulting instead of R&D), so I lost interest. The other could have been interesting, but they took their time to get back to me and I did not want to lose the Bloomberg offer by waiting too long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I see it as a sign hubris when a company makes you invest a ton of time into their interview process and then don't even show you the courtesy of an explanation if no offer is extended.

<comment><USER43> It depends on what you mean by "explanation". Almost no company will tell you specifics of why you didn't make the cut (at least in the US) because there are many, many ways you can spin it into something you can sue over.

That said, with care, there is some feedback that can be given. It would be great if interviewing could be more of a learning process, especially on the technical side. "Go read more on taking advantage of cache coherency", "go get some more experience in software development with a team instead of on your own", etc

<comment><USER42> Honestly, there isn't even a need for an actual explanation. Just a simple, "thank you for your time, we decided to move on to other candidates" would be sufficient. It's called courtesy.

What Google is doing here however sounds like a complete and utter cluster- fuck. I mean, this:

>>After finding out I passed the interviews, and Google finished doing my background check, I spent the next two months on an emotional roller-coaster. I spoke to a couple hiring mangers, exchanged many confused and angry emails with friends and colleagues at Google, and had numerous phone calls with my recruiter, whose tone ranged from apologetic to congratulatory. At various times, I was not entirely sure if I was fully rejected, or if the only thing standing between me and a formal job offer was some paper work. Many phone calls with the recruiter (who was very kind and helpful) were required for clarification, but did little to assuage my annoyance as she was not allowed to explain any of the inner workings of the hiring process.

Wow. Just wow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Up until about a year ago (or maybe 2 now?), Larry Page still personally reviewed every single Engineering resume.

This gives you some idea about what could happen at the "11th hour" at Google.

</comment><comment><USER45> So, to make this more constructive than a rant-article, does anyone know who does this right? For a large company?

Can it be done with a separate HR staff, or do you need an engineer on the inside managing this?

<comment><USER46> Disclosure: I am a Microsoft employee but am only speaking about my personal observation of our processes. This is not the company's opinion. I believe I am not disclosing any proprietary information.

Microsoft doesn't always get it right, but the process is designed and intended to provide a top-notch candidate experience (sometimes at the expense of the interviewer's time, company's budget, etc.). I primarily have experience with the college recruiting side of the house. Industry candidates come through a different pipeline.

* We have people dedicated to logistics: scheduling the loops with engineers, air transit, hotel, rental cars, etc. * A separate group of dedicated people handles the candidate's side: Email them details ahead of time, meet them at the beginning and end of the day, and keep them informed throughout the process. * Although we have an official tool for documenting interview loops, the more important aspect is a strong culture of "warm handoffs" from interviewer to interviewer. What was covered, where did the candidate do well, where could we use a deeper dive to understand the candidate's skills? * Training at multiple levels for interviewers: Before you can begin interviewing, you have to attend a training. Many divisions have historically required additional training. Want to go to campus? There's another training for that. Also, the training now emphasizes how useless "trick" questions are and how to formulate good questions.

There's more, but it veers into proprietary details of the process that I don't feel comfortable disclosing.

<comment><USER47> When I was in school I was always amazed at how lavishly Microsoft spent at my no-name tech school. A full time local Microsoft recruiting rep (don't remember if regional or assigned solely to that school), quarterly Microsoft events with giveaways, prominent booth at the career fair. Google probably didn't even know the place existed, but especially at the time they were such a sought-after company that they probably didn't need to expend any effort on recruiting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Disclaimer: I work for Google. These are my opinions and not necessarily Google's.

My hiring experience was slower than other companies, but did not seem particularily obtuse. It was maybe a few weeks from my initial interview to an offer. I delayed my interview so I could study and had a waiting period after offer before I started due to visa, but the core hiring process was just a few weeks.

Talking with others internally about their experience, it was all pretty similar. No one I know internally suffered through their hiring process.

It does seem to be the case that we sometimes don't do a good job of properly rejecting candidates who didn't make the cut, but there are so many factors that go into these things it's impossible to take a face value a one sided view.

My advice for anyone who does want to work for Google is that you shouldn't, if possible, parallelize your Google application with any other companies. Try here, and if it doesn't work out, continue with your job hunt. But if you try and speed up the Google process by presenting competing offers, you're gonna have a bad time.

<comment><USER49> This seems a bit arrogant in the SV job climate. Google doesn't exactly have the prestige it once did. Yes, it set the current standard most Silicon Valley engineers enjoy, but most see it as large, unwieldy and less prestigious than it used to be. Companies like Twitter and AirBnB seem to be grabbing up the highest end talent and whose names carry some real weight on a resume.

It would behoove Google hiring managers to understand they're not at the top of the heap anymore for the choicest job in SV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Okay since there appear to be people here who know what they are talking about may I ask a question about what happened to me?

At the end of my Microsoft Internship I got an offer, this triggered a Google recruiter to contact me and do a phone screener. I'm not sure how well I did on the interview but when I mentioned I had decided not to take the Microsoft offer the recruiter said they wanted to push any next stage stuff back a couple months (4-5 months), they mentioned December.

That was fine by me. In fact I was still fine in November / December because I was trying to interview at Mozilla and was working on making a contribution in support of that.

Mozilla hit their hiring cap just after I got the patch accepted. So now I'm curious what happened to the recruiter? Was the sudden change in tone when I said I wasn't accepting the offer the recruiter worrying I had lied on my blog? Was she serious about moving any later interviews until closer to graduation, and maybe just left the company?

<comment><USER51> When negotiating (and interviewing for a job is a negotiation), never give more information than you have to.

In your case, no one but the recruiter (and other people on the hiring committee) know why you were really rejected; but what's certain is that telling her that you decided to not take the offer certainly didn't help you.

However, saying something like: "Microsoft's offer is really enticing, and I'm thinking very hard about it. That being said I've heard so many great things about Google, and I'd love to work there. Microsoft wants my decision by <end of month, end of next week, whatever>\- do you think we could go through the interviews before then?".

That alone wouldn't have gotten you an offer, but it would have made you a slightly more desirable target.

<comment><USER50> Thanks Gui, those are good points I'll take to heart.

<comment><USER51> Keep in mind that interviewing is ultimately a human thing, and thus never perfect or rational (even though everyone would like to think their hiring process is flawless and as logical and unbiased as can be).

Prepare as much as you can, go in with your best attitude, etc.- but at the end of the day, interviews can result into a negative answer for something completely out of your control. Maybe you remind one of the interviewers of their ex-boyfriend, or they don't like your voice on the phone, or they've never used framework X but the guy they just fired was really into X and you put X as the first thing on your resume, etc. etc. etc.

Don't get discouraged- it's part of the game. I am starting next week at $(big large company where I've wanted to work since I've been a teenager), and that was after 6+ months of interviewing, talking to about as many teams, and hearing "we think we'd be really great at $company but the team you've just interviewed with isn't the right team for you" every time. Funny thing, the position I ended up getting is beyond what I could have dreamed of 6 months ago, and far more interesting+challenging than any of the other teams I interviewed with there.

There's also nothing wrong with working at a company for a year or two with the sole intention of getting better so you can re-interview with the company of your dreams.

Work hard, keep your long term goals in mind, and good luck :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> We often don't understand is that our inaction communicates just as much as our actions and speech do. The difference is that the recipient can interpret inaction to mean whatever they want it to mean. In an interview process, I could interpret silence from HR to mean that the company has moved on when the truth is that the recruiter is on vacation.

Google can obviously get away with this because they're still one of the richest company in the world. When they piss off a candidate, they've got twenty ready to take her place. For those of us at smaller companies, it's crucial that we over-communicate during delays and move decisively when hiring.

</comment><comment><USER53> I had a similar process out of college, but didn't even make it to the phone screen portion of the process before getting mad and giving up. Google was sort of a dream job for me, too, but the recruiting process made it clear that I was at best a potential cog or a line item to their HR.

They'd never call at arranged times, but did call while I was giving a project presentation, once during another interview (probably looked good actually, "Oh it's the google recruiter again." <ignore>)... the whole thing was enough to put me off. I was a bit older than the standard college grad, so maybe I just become disillusioned at 8th grade level.

</comment><comment><USER54> I recently had a very similar experience with Google.

They have you run through the hoops a full day or two of interviews, then deliberate for months. I ended up correctly answering every question given to me, but was in the end rejected, the only feedback I received is that it was a marginal situation but one committee member "had some doubts".

Being that I didn't graduate from a ivy league school, far from it, my imagination can come up with many motivating factors of their various hiring committees. Also, I did not approach Google, their recruiter contacted me based on my rapidly growing list of successes on my resume.

But in the end, I'm glad they didn't offer my the position, because after reflection, it was really just the prestige of working for Google that drew me to even consider an offer from them, when the smaller, more agile and more innovative atmosphere of a start-up is far more in-tune with my skillset and mentality.

And while there is no in-house laundry, so I can literally live in my "open office" without the bother of ever leaving work, I do have a few things in which I don't imagine I would find at Google, namely: A good work/life balance, an innovative atmosphere with little bureaucratic inertia and most importantly, a warm feeling when I'm driving to work in the morning.

In the end, I think it's google's policy of "Let's get the best, forget the rest" that is slowly taking them from "Do no Evil, be a cool place to work at" to "stuffy, sterile, homogeneous corporate environment". As people who are often "the best" have a much higher chance to be the trajectory oriented egocentric types who rarely, in my experience, produce "the best" outcomes and seem to be more interested in proving/showing/demonstrating how much better/smarter/whatever'er they are than everybody else that, despite their reputed intellect, seem to have a poorly understanding of the prisoner's dilemma as outlined by game theory.

eplilogue: the start-up I ended up with exceeded the salary requirements I handed Google, have free food too, and oh yeah, I get to make robots, oh yeah!

</comment><comment><USER29> I recommend disregarding the ping-pong tables, the free organic-sustainable food, beer, MacBooks, the branding (we are enlightened geniuses constructing the future), etc. Pay attention to who you will be working with, and for. If your prospective job will be bullshit janitorial work, it doesn't matter if Guido van Rossum works there.

Throughout the process of interviewing and joining a new company, they will be communicating important things to you, whether they realize it or not. Just listen.

</comment><comment><USER55> I had a pretty shite experience with Google applying for internships.

I had gotten through the interview process and told I was being placed with a team and would get a chance to speak to my new manager in November/December. I give her my preferences for placement and I waited until a few months before the summer started and asked my recruiters what was going on, and they said there were very few positions left and they must have flubbed the paperwork. She said she would work hard to get my team sorted out. Nothing for a week. I ask again, she apologizes. Nothing for another week. She apologizes and I finally speak with my manager. It is one of the teams near the bottom of my list of preferences. I had several great offers at the time and was by this point very unenthusiastic. I ask for another team, but am told all placements have been made and that they will try me again in the future.

Now I get calls/emails from Google recruiters every few months, seemingly always a few days after I sign a contract to work elsewhere. Are they intentionally trying to poach me? Anyways, I've had enough of big companies. I'm going to a startup as the 7th engineer that will let me work remotely as I sail around the world. I think I've made the right decision.

</comment><comment><USER56> Google grew big and its bureaucracy grew with it. As well as many other things have changed, and not for the better. It's not the Google of the 2000s anymore.

</comment><comment><USER57> I went through Google's interview process twice, including passing all the phone interviews and remote coding sessions and being flown out to Mountain View, only to be rejected each time.

When they started another recruiting push and asked me to come back and interview a third time I told them no thanks.

Ironically I wound up working for Google anyway after the startup I worked for was acquired!

</comment><comment><USER58> Here's a secret for those who still want to work at Google. Put your resume on Dice and you'll probably get contacted by a contracting company. My friend who did this has no college degree and just had to do 2 non-technical phone screens. He gets free food and whatever and has his dream "job at Google". Now if you want to get a job at Google doing something interesting, all bets are off. He works on a large angular app that shows hardware allocations for an internal team. It's his first programming job at a software company though so he's learning a lot.

<comment><USER59> I'd like to hear more about this. It seems like a valid and responsible way for someone who is not an A+ player and needs some experience to get their foot in the door.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> More and more of these stories seem to be popping up now. It doesn't seem to be to googles overall detriment though as people are still just as interested (I think?) to work there. Guess they can get away with it.

</comment><comment><USER61> Is it possible the same people doing the hiring, are the ones doing the tech 'support'?

</comment><comment><USER62> "on-site laundry machines"

Let's just pause and think about how INSANE that is. Are people that work at Google really so hopelessly dependent on their employer that they can't handle basic bodily sanitation without help?

Let me get this straight. These people are _taking their laundry on the Google bus_ to _wash their clothes at work_?

Hi, reality much?

<comment><USER63> Plenty of people live in apartments that don't necessarily have laundry on site. I don't have any firsthand experience, but I'd imagine it'd be a _lot_ more convenient to be able to do your laundry at work for free vs. having to take a separate trip to a laundromat, feed quarters to the machines, etc.

<comment><USER64> I think this is key. I have a laundry machine at home, and would honestly be ashamed to bring in my wash, but if it saved me a trek to the laundromat, and the google laundry facility was a few minutes walk from my desk, it might give me a nice break from my day to mindlessly fold clothes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> My guess is that OP is not in the U.S. Google isn't perfect but a 2-month background check is NOT the norm. A company that dysfunctional would get no talent.

In my experience, any scrutiny beyond the normal 2-3 references (no back channel) can be killed by faking (or, better yet, getting) a competing offer. That type of scrutiny/delay means they're on the fence because they see you as a low-status (but possibly capable) chump and social proof is often what it takes to land on the right side.

</comment><comment><USER66> Well, that escalated quickly!

</comment><comment><USER67> It may just me, but I feel like you're just a little sour grapes.

If it was really your dream job, you wouldn't give up on it so easily.

It sounds like the root of it is, you desire to work at a "great perks" type silicon valley company, not google in particular.

Time to dream again...

</comment><comment><USER68> I don't get it. The blog post is about failing multiple Google interviews, then complaining that the process is good enough for you, then saying Google isn't your "dream job" anymore?

How is this different than the old, "I didn't want to go to your stupid birthday party anyway!"??

Maybe I missed something in the post but I was hoping to read about someone who had actually worked at Google before criticizing it..

</comment><comment><USER69> Get over it, you were not good enough for them and that's what it is. If you were "google quality", you would have had long had an offer. This is for everyone else reading this, if you don't want to go through this. You must dazzle the folks interviewing you. Building amazing products you are willing to demo, solve interesting problem utilizing ridiculously large data sets, or in interesting AI domains. Google doesn't want average folks. I don't work at google or ever did, but your post is one of many lamenting about this.

<comment><USER70> Yeah not really, I know far too many "above average" people working there. Not everyone there is a savant, heck not even close. Companies on wall-street like DE Shaw have had far superior talent for a while now. And no, not all of their products are "stellar", some of them are utter shit. Just because you have accepted mediocrity and self-pity doesn't mean everyone should. Hard-work and practice goes a long way.</comment></comment>


World's Leading NGOs Share How We Should Hack Climate Change - <AUTHOR> http://blog.geekli.st/post/97240845647/worlds-leading-ngos-share-how-we-should-hack-climate

<comment><USER3> I'm a convert - a week ago didn't think much about this issue, but after hearing all the talks - We just gotta unite and do something!!

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm expecting big things from this. the only thing faster than climate change is technological change. go on brave hackers - into the breach

<comment><USER3> Geeks are the superheroes of our future

<comment><USER4> or just like - <USER2>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looking forward to this weekend's Climate Change hackathon!

</comment><comment><USER6> I really enjoyed the talks - thanks Dan for setting them all up and running them!

</comment><comment><USER7> Awesome event!</comment>


Uber wants to test its flying taxis by 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/25/uber-elevate-flying-taxi-network-2020-test-launch/ <comment><USER2> Considering it couldnt get its self driving cars to not require human intervention more than ever 2 miles...I think I'll skip thanks.</comment>


Binary in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://danthedev.com/2015/07/25/binary-in-javascript/

<comment><USER3> There are several minor erroneous points in this document. Here are the two that are probably the most egregious:

\- The whole object and string representation thing is naïve to the point of total incorrectness. Where is the object and its length and type stored, for example? And browsers intern strings (store them once with garbage collection of some form to clear out the values when they are no longer needed) and don't use null-terminated things (otherwise you couldn't have "\0"), so your 320 bits is actually more likely to be 192 or 96, with the full 320 bits plus approximately three or six more words occurring only once. (I'm being a little vague about this because I'm not familiar with what specific techniques are actually used in browsers at present.) The end result of it all is that the actual figure will, I think, be more like 30–50 bytes per tile, not 60. (Then again, it may end up more, and it will definitely depend on the browser; I'm not up to date with the performance- and memory-efficiency techniques used.) I'm complaining here only because it's misleading about how things are done; the concerns it raises are absolutely genuine.

\- Bitwise operations on numbers are only 32-bit, not 64-bit. You want 64-bit bitwise operations? There's no native support for it, you'll need to emulate it. This is a part of the tangled mess that is a unified number type which can be either a 32-bit integer or a 64-bit floating point number.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. There were a lot of ends that I tried to tie up that started to be difficult to find hard evidence for. Some of the string/object storage stuff is discussed casually in mailing lists, but there aren't great places I could point to and say: _this_ is the definitive answer. If you would point me in the right direction for some of these resources, I'd be happy to amend the article. Thanks for reading all the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's more, when your data is in a TypedArray, you can upload the whole thing to a texture with a single call to WebGLRenderingContext#texImage2D.

<comment><USER5> Canvas supports a similiar method: _getImageData_ returns a _Uint8ClampedArray_ , _putImageData_ stores it back into the context.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Canvas_API/...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Canvas_API/Tutorial/Pixel_manipulation_with_canvas)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've recently been getting into binary formats and being a JavaScript developer it is very hard to think in binary.

This is the first time I see someone giving a good real world example of bitwise operators that I can understand.

<comment><USER7> I agree, it is almost ignored in most tutorials and I only see implementation examples in some neat projects, and always left with a wondering mind.

<comment><USER8> A long time ago I gave a horrendously overkill SO answer about it.

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11400242/bit-vector- imple...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11400242/bit-vector- implementation-of-set-in-programming-pearls-2nd-edition/11400933#11400933)

<comment><USER9> Very good explanation

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This whole problem will probably be solved with Typed Objects, which looks as though they'll be standardised with ES7 next year. Plus, there's already a decent typed objects polyfill available, so don't go littering your code with bitwise operations.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's good to hear, I wasn't aware of Typed Objects. I guess the library linked at the end of the post is basically a very non-specific polyfill already? Well, using it like that is one way to get around bitwise littering.

<comment><USER10> The library at the bottom isn't anywhere near a typed objects polyfill - <USER2> just packs data into small spaces. Typed Objevts would let you have objects where properties are of a static type (int8, Boolean, string) and they are stored using Array Buffers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, the underlying storage mechanisms are different and it doesn't support as many types, but I didn't say it was a good polyfill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If the design of your roguelike limits player vision so they only see their surroundings, then instead of generating the 512 x 512 map in one go, you can improve the performance/memory usage by generating only the blocks around the player.

This would save a lot of initial loading time and could support maps much larger than 512 x 512.

<comment><USER12> Does this matter if your engine doesn't render stuff outside the viewport?

<comment><USER11> If your engine doesn't need to render objects outside the viewport, then you don't need to generate those objects until you actually need to render it.

<comment><USER12> Yeah I got that, but I was just wondering if thats where the performance hit is. Generating the map vs rendering outside visible area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If there's one thing I've learned in a half year of JS game development, it's that there are usually good libraries to solve most low-level problems. Compactly storing a 512x512 array of binary values can be as simple as:

        var vegetation = require('ndarray-bit')([512, 512])
        vegetation.set(23, 42, true)
        vegetation.get(23, 42) // true

<comment><USER14> If there's one thing i've learned in ~5 years of game development (and ~1 of JS game development), it's that generic libraries are almost always inferior to a custom solution when you're performance tuning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Awesome technique, thanks for posting. I have a very large grid of nodes for my game map (used for path finding) and this looks like it could save a lot of memory.

</comment><comment><USER16> >Unbeknownst to some, Javascript comes equipped with a relatively good set of bitwise operators.

Never thought that there were people doing Javascript who didn't know about bitwise operators. I guess I know where 99% of the "Javascript sucks" posts come from.

<comment><USER17> It is a low level language, it is blazingly fast and powerful if you use it correctly.

It is also badly designed and disliked as far as I can tell just about universally in every aspect as a language. Objective C is also blazingly fast and powerful if you use it correctly but not everyone wants to. It isn't about not knowing it has access to bitwise operators.

<comment><USER14> JS is not really a low level language in any sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In a similar fashion, storing user properties like whether or not they want email subscriptions, their notification settings, etc... Is something that I often use a bitmask field in my model to save space in the db.

These can be queried using bitwise operations and you can abstract all of it with synthetic instance properties.

User.email_enabled = true would translate to 0010 or something in, for example, a properties column.

Really handy stuff!!!

<comment><USER19> Are you running out of space in your database? It just seemed like a way to needlessly complicate your database, make it difficult to query (what was email_enabled again? the third bit?), difficult for other developers to use (now it needs a comment to understand) and difficult to constrain for data integrity.

I think that unless you're having space issues, you're better off using boolean columns.

<comment><USER18> This was somewhat of a contrived example.</comment></comment></comment>


MPZMail Email Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://www.mpzmail.com

<comment><USER2> This is ace</comment>


Ask HN: imap-based Facebook-clone without privacy concerns? - <AUTHOR>

Would you use an imap-based facebook-inspired communication platform with no privacy concerns?
I work on a system which retrieves your mails from your imap-inbox and outbox and displays them like you know it from facebook. The first message is clearly highlighted and all replies are shown as comments. If you enter the site for the first time you see nothing. Maybe there must appear a friends-suggestion.
If you search for friends you get a list of whom you received mails and whom you wrote mails. If you add them as friends all mails between you and your new friend appear in your stream. The other one will not get informed, that's not necessary. You can comment or reply to every message. If you comment your own message the receivers of the message you comment on will get your new comment as email. If you reply to someone else message, the sender and the other receivers will get your comment. The idea is not to force other people to use this system. If it fits for me, that's enough. The others will get my messages as regular mails and their mails got to my message-stream. There is no media break.
Maybe the outgoing mail is styled so the receiver notices that I use a very interesting system and want to try this himself. An idea for the future is to send hidden information within the outgoing mails. If two friends use this platform to communicate and maybe they hit the "like"-Button for a message or picture this information can be send afterward with your next email to this person. His system will get informed to display the "like"-info. To avoid privacy concerns I though of making this open-source so that everyone can install this on an own secure server. But what about those who do not have the skills to install a php-script with database-interaction? Maybe a standalone-php2exe-version can help?
What are your ideas about this? Is it to fail? Or might this be a way to use email in a better way? Maybe for a closed group to organize the messages in a better way? <comment><AUTHOR> Seems not to be an interesting idea...</comment>


AES-256 Exponentially Easier to Brute Force Than Expected - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedvnc.org/newsblog/2014/6/9/aes-256-exponentially-easier-to-brute-force-than-expected

<comment><USER2> I think the title is slightly misleading. I don't think they're saying that the algorithm is exponentially easier to brute-force. Rather they are saying there is exponentially more computing power available over the duration of the attempt than previous calculations showed. Possibly the same result, but not the same thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, it's a bit sensationalist, but I think it's accurate to say that it is exponentially easier to apply brute force than expected generally, with no real specific relation to AES. And maybe the lack of expectation is really the issue - we just don't look at the changes in compute capability enough, which doesn't change how strong AES is, just our perception of it and how to design security? But yeah, you're right, its not the same thing, and it can be misleading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Bruce Schneider's thermodynamic argument linked in the post (aka the Landauer principle[1]) shows clearly that there is not enough energy available in the solar system to feasibly brute force a 256 bit key.

So what exactly is being argued here then? That advances in computational tech will break the Landauer limit?

It seems more likely that the exponential growth of computational capacity will end soon.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle)

<comment><AUTHOR> What is being argued is that understanding the relationship (which is linear) is more important and more useful than understanding the improbability.

<comment><USER4> It's not a straightforward linear relationship, though, it relies on exponential growth in computing power to a point _past_ where physics allows it to go. I think you need a specific assertion as to how it will be possible to overcome the thermodynamics before you can make an affirmative claim that it _is_ exponentially easier to brute-force AES than previously believed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So if all computers ever made are were used and you added every PC fresh off the line to the brute force attack, you could calculate a single AES-256 key in just 100 years?! Better switch to 512-bit just to be sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> lol, totally! Or we'll have no secrets from our grandchildren. I'm actually surprised how much the data still supports the old 1996 study that said 90-bits is necessary +2/3 bits per year to maintain strength. It's less than a decade for anything under 100bits, which is kinda the generally secure duration if I remember correctly.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does iCloud.com work? - <AUTHOR> I was recently on iCloud, and as a designer who has now got into coding, I was just wondering what technologies were necessary in creating a website like iCloud.com?
I always feel like the website feels like desktop software, and I was just wondering if anyone had any insight into how it's made.
I'm just very interested in how things work, and figured HN would be the best place to ask this type of question. <comment><USER2> It was built with a JavaScript framework called SproutCore.

[http://sproutcore.com/](http://sproutcore.com/)</comment>


Tell HN: Peter Roberts, immigration lawyer for YC, will do an AMA this Friday - <AUTHOR> Peter Roberts (https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=proberts) is an immigration lawyer who has done stellar work for YC and YC startups. He has a long record of success in difficult cases and is good at explaining things.
Since HN users and/or their companies have many concerns about U.S. immigration, we asked Peter if he'd do an AMA for HN. He kindly agreed and will do it this Friday (Dec. 11th) at 11 AM Pacific.
Peter says there are a lot of misconceptions about U.S. immigration floating around on the internet. Hopefully he can clear some of them up for the community here. This is your chance to get high quality information from a true expert, so please bring your questions on Friday! <comment><USER2> I would love to hear at least the basics for a non-US/Canadian citizen: 1\. you get an interview with YC, which visa should I get? B1/B2? purpose of travel? 2\. you get into YC for 3 months, again, what kind of visa? purpose of travel? 3\. you get +$1M in seed round, how do you stay? 4\. you get $5M in series A, how do I live there?

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope someone asks about cruise ships situated in international waters. I love it when serious people entertain crazy ideas, and I feel like Peter must have thoughts on that

<comment><USER4> Silicon Flotilla? I like the sound of that. We should get a tax lawyer to weigh in too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't have a bachelor's degree, Asian and already 13 years out of college, now a family man and going back to college to get my degree is not an option (since I'm working to provide for my family), is there a possibility for me to work or start a company in the US?

<comment><USER6> I have read about this in the past, to qualify for H1B you can add number of years in college(max. 3 in case of drop out) + years of experience in the related work(job you are applying for).

3 years of work experience constitutes to 1 year of college degree. Hope this helps

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is pretty sensitive, any chance of you taking anonymous questions and posting them, or should ppl just make a throw-away?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, it's fine to make a throwaway account for such cases. If anyone has concerns beyond that, email email@example.com and we'll figure something out.

I expect that Peter will mostly answer questions in general terms, rather than advising about specific cases. But everyone should feel free to ask what they're wondering about, and if there's any worry about personal exposure, by all means err on the side of discretion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Peter Roberts is fantastically helpful, for what it's worth. I expect that this will be great.

<comment><USER9> Seconded! I worked with him on getting my H1B transferred to my startup.

<comment><USER10> Thirded! Peter is awesome, have referred him to many people with great success.

<comment><USER11> One more upvote for Peter, a great guy and a fantastic attorney

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > He has a long record of success in difficult cases and is good at explaining > things.

Make sure he gets to read that. Warms a lawyer's heart.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is it literally impossible for a Canadian without a bachelor's degree to work at or start a company in the US?

<comment><USER14> Working at a company in the US as a Canadian without a degree is possible. I moved from Ontario to SV before I had completed my degree.

I was able to obtain TN status under the "Scientific Technician/Technologist" category. It's not as straightforward as usual, but it's definitely possible.

Now that I have completed my degree I use the usual "Computer Systems Analyst" category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I hope someone asks about ppl starting and working for their own companies on B1/B2 visas.

</comment><comment><USER16> Is getting a visa to work at a U.S at startup something unique to the YC program? I am/was under the impression that the company had to be accredited to be able to employ foreign nationals.

Is there any advise you can give for a current undergrad (for me personally citizen of NZ and UK if that matters) to improve the odds of being able to accept a job or PHD study in the US (on the visa side of things).

<comment><USER17> This is basically me only Canadian instead of New Zealand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Awesome.. Looking forward to it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Several startups I talked to, don't have enough knowledge dealing with H1-B applications. As an applicant, how can I help them to make this process clear?

</comment><comment><USER20> Has the AMA started? Where are we to post questions?

<comment><USER20> Here's the link [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10719080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10719080)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So where will the AMA happen? Is there already a link up or will it be posted on HN when it starts?

<comment><AUTHOR> The latter, this Friday at 11 AM Pacific time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sweet it starts as soon as I get off work to boot.

</comment><comment><USER22> Much appreciated!</comment>


Show HN: Open Source TV Show Airtime Guide - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sallar/serialgraphy I made an online TV Show Airtime tracking guide using CSS3 and AngularJS. It's responsive and retina ready. http://serialgraphy.com <comment><USER2> Next time, post the actual site ([http://serialgraphy.com/](http://serialgraphy.com/)) and add a link to the repo on the site (such as a "source" link at the bottom or a "fork me on github" badge on [http://nodejs.org/](http://nodejs.org/))

<comment><USER3> Totally. I'm sure there's a healthy percentage of visitors who will not scroll below the fold and see the description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good idea, Good design. Keep it up!</comment>


How The Comcast and Netflix Deal Is Structured - <AUTHOR> http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/02/heres-comcast-netflix-deal-structured-numbers.html <comment><USER2> I see this blog post conveniently ignores some details. I suppose this probably isn't surprising, pretty sure his consultancy firm is a client of Comcast's and that aside, has clear skin in the game on the CDN front.

1) The original intent behind Settlement-free Peering was that networks would share similar amounts of data. This was before the time of readily available and cheap hardware that enabled fast interconnections. This was a time when running a network at scale was horribly difficult and even a little "extra" load would bring things tumbling down. This is no longer even remotely true. Comcast's fabric is capable of many-Tbps of throughput.

2) >> This is where a lot of the confusion starts as many are under the impression that ISPs like Comcast are suppose to allow any transit provider to push an unlimited amount of traffic into their network without any compensation. This isn't a Comcast specific policy, but rather one that is standard for all ISPs.

No sane person is suggesting this. People instead are suggesting what you later allude to as Comcast looking to double dip (I'll get to that).

3) >> As a result, Cogent has to take all the necessary business steps to make sure Cogent has enough capacity to pass Netflix's traffic on from Cogent's network to Comcast. But Cogent isn't doing that.

Cogent is refusing to pay the many fold markup that Comcast is demanding for access to its subscribers. Comcast is well aware of its position of power in this. They control access, they're the gatekeeper, and as such know they can charge more than the market rate for transit. Every commercial carrier would balk at being asked to pay $5/Mbps instead of the usual $0.25/Mbps.

3) >> In a little known, but public fact, anyone who is on Comcast and using Apple TV to stream Netflix wasn't having quality problems. The reason for this is that Netflix is using Level 3 and Limelight to stream their content specifically to the Apple TV device.

Level3 doesn't have problems because they too have agreed to pay Comcast protection money.

4) >>Netflix is the one in control of this, not Comcast or any ISP.

Neflix is in control insofar as they control their personal uplinks. Even if they were to privately peer with every residential ISP in the US, they wouldn't be in complete control. Netflix would have to own the last mile to be in control.</comment>


Iranian biologists face US trial for trying to take proteins out of the country - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01901-4 <comment><AUTHOR> >> One of the defendants, Masoud Soleimani, a prominent stem-cell researcher at Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran, has spent eight months in an Atlanta jail.

Utterly and positively shameful. It's the kind of conduct you'd expect from the Iranian Government, not the "shining beacon unto other nations".

<comment><USER2> Iranian scientists are not alone. Many Chinese-born scientists are targeted as well. Scientific research has been politicized to another level lately.

[https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long- reads/arti...](https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long- reads/article/2144652/spying-charges-against-chinese-american)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/technology/sherry-chen- na...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/technology/sherry-chen-national- weather-service.html)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-13/the-u- s-i...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-06-13/the-u-s-is-purging- chinese-americans-from-top-cancer-research)

[https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/chinese-scientists-fbi- nih...](https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/chinese-scientists-fbi- nih/2019/06/13/id/920298/)</comment></comment>


How the fuck is trim in Python? - <AUTHOR> http://www.inerciasensorial.com.br/2009/01/22/perils-of-software-development/how-the-fuck-is-trim-in-python/ <comment><USER2> "How the fuck is..." is the wrong wording, at least in idiomatic American English.

"What the fuck" (aka "WTF?") connotes more "this is wrong/surprising" than "could you please tell me the answer?". "WTF?" is often a rhetorical question, but even when it demands a response, the response is a situational explanation, not a mere bit of trivia (such as "trim is called strip").

"What the fuck is trim _doing_ in Python?" is more idiomatic in its use of 'fuck', but would express surprise that Python has a trim() function, as if it were against the spirit of the language. Because your "How the fuck..." sounds a little like that in its use of 'fuck', it gives the wrong impression for what you're trying to achieve. (Clicking your link, I expected a rant, not a idea for a equivalence-lookup service.)

To express curiosity about the right answer -- "what is the equivalent of trim in Python?" -- but with the same sort of irreverence possible via 'swear' words, a more likely wording from a native speaker would be "how the hell do you do trim in Python?"

"How the hell" expresses exasperation but also suggests some genuine interest in a 'right' answer. (You sometimes see "how the fuck _do I_..." or "how the fuck _do you_..." also, but anything starting "how the fuck" is far less common than either "how the hell" or "what the fuck".)

In general, using 'fuck' casually can be a problem, for a number of reasons. I believe the primary reason is that it is distracting -- it claims that the containing statement is emotionally important and demands special attention.

Is a simple cross-programming-language lookup facility emotionally important? No.

So some people will act 'offended' at use of a word with other 'naughty/private' connotations, and even some people who like to swear will feel like you've diluted the word's value.

You need to save 'fuck' for really important uses, or it won't have any fucking meaning left at all.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I hope there's no problem submitting my own blog post. I've been thinking about making a website like the one I described on the post for a long time but never got up and did it.

Anyway, I also hope the "fuck" up there isn't too offensive. I don't live in the USA (and english isn't my primary language), and while it seems people use this word every minute of their lives, on written material (and social contexts) of the web is rarely seen, so I don't quite grasp the ethic relationship of daily english and the internet.

If you could read my mind (in portuguese) and see what I really think when I am trying to remember how trim is named in Python, worse profanities would appear anyway :)

Oh, and I don't know if this is "HN material". I've complained about some articles that appeared here, blog posts without much content at least. But I've also seen worse stuff live longer on the main page, so I thought, what better way to see if what I wrote would survive than just submitting it?

<comment><USER3> I think it's a really awesome idea. As others have pointed out, "what the fuck" is the right way to say it.

More common than that these days is "WTF" (the abbreviation). This allows you to get the same point across without using profanity. (Keep in mind that in some environments like schools or corporations, sites with profanity can get flagged and blocked.)

So maybe "WTF is ___ in ___?"

<comment><USER4> I gotta disagree about "what the fuck" being the right way to say it. I am not concerned about the rebellious nature of cursing, but I am bothered by using words that contribute so little to the meaning. I've heard arguments that they serve to express things in a more emotional manner. Like anything, they've been so over used that the emotional enhancement is diluted to simply being a socially rebellious expression.

 _Edit: On this topic, I think people, at some level, are aware of this. That's why it's not as commonly found in written word vs. spoken word._

<comment><USER5> The nice thing about it here is that it very effectively conveys the frustration that underlies the value proposition for the site.

<comment><USER6> At some level I would like to use this sort of site for the humor value. It not only sympathizes with me; it empathizes with me AND works to solve my problem - so long as it works right. If it doesn't I'd be adding a few more colorful words to the mix :-)

Edit: Grammar

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this is a great idea.

What the fuck is <Language>'s [some string] in <another Language>?

[some string] can even be common objects methods, like Array.splice

For each mapping, you should allow comments to fill in the specifics. For example, VB has "String.left()" and "String.right()", which can both be achieved in by PHP's substr() if you pass the right params. Boy.. am I going to be hated for the languages I just mentioned...

<comment><USER8> I don't hate you. I think pity or scorn would be more appropriate. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool idea. There's already a similar site for PHP->Rails - <http://railsforphp.com/> \- would be great to have something that works for multiple languages.

My $0.02: Allow user annotation (ie, comments). Back when PHP was new, user comments on the function pages were very helpful for figuring out how to do stuff, what to avoid, known bugs etc. I often miss it when working with other languages.

</comment><comment><USER10> That can be one of the most frustrating things about using a new language. Great idea, hope you can implement it yourself.

</comment><comment><USER11> While the initial function mappings could be quite simple, I see the future of this being a bit like Google Translate for computer languages. We just need a Mechanical Turk wiki like process to get the longer snippets code translated. I used to work with ESRI ArcView software and its Avenue scripting language. When they changed their internal scripting to Visual Basic for Applications, there was a lot of work to be had translating scripts. (Now they support Python as a scripting language as well.) I wonder if for any given JVM language (Java, JRuby, Jython, etc.) you could write a decompiler for the bytecode that would take you back to a different source code language.

</comment><comment><USER12> "How" seems like the wrong interrogative. Perhaps "Where the fuck is 'trim' in Python?"

</comment><comment><USER13> One thing: what works for PHP isn't necessarily a good approach to learning another language, such as Python.

PHP's global space and the feel of "batteries included" is sharply contrasted to Python's typing and object oriented feel. Having people write PHP in Python would not only be counter-productive, the people being brought up on that style wouldn't get much out of python.

The trim example specifically: line = "foo\n" new = line.rstrip("\n")

vs. if we were to directly to transliterate from php, it would be string.rstrip(line,"\n")

(which is quite a different style)

This approach also under-emphasizes using language specific tools (e.g. interactive python, pydoc).

<comment><USER8> Typically the learning curve on a new language goes something like this.

1\. Knows old language

2\. Learns the syntax of new language

3\. Writes old language style in new language

4\. Through continued practice and learning in the new language, starts to pick up the idioms and styles of the new language.

5\. Becomes fluent and well versed in the idioms, styles, advantages, and flaws of the new language. Can contrast old language with new language well and use the style most appropriate to the problem.

6\. rinse and repeat

Not everyone progresses all the way through the process when they pick up a language. In fact I'd argue that some people never even pick up the idiomatic way of doing something in a language even if that is their only language.

I think you could think of this like an english-spanish dictionary. It's not going to teach you the idiomatic way of speaking, but it will give you the correct word to use. Which I would suggest is a milestone on the path to idiomatic speaking.

* edit for formatting

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ah, now I understand what you're getting at ...

Indeed, this is a great idea. Would love to see someone like Joel Spolsky implement this as part of StackOverflow.com.

I'd be interested in doing this in Rails ... if anyone wants to collab with me, let me know (email in profile)

</comment><comment><USER15> I started a project like this once, but never finished. Contact me if you want my incomplete "Perl to Python phrasebook." My goal was to help unfortunate Perl programmers migrate to Python.

One thing to look out for: things that are functions in some languages are syntax in others, methods in others, and complicated recipes in others. You need to give people sample code. For example, look at how each language wants you to express "length of an array/list:"

Python: numbers = [4,8,15,16,23,42] print len(numbers) # yields 6

Perl: @numbers = (4,8,15,16,23,42); print $#numbers + 1; # yields 6 # or... $numlen = @numbers; print $numlen;

Not really a "function" at all in Perl.

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh man, I was thinking the same thing. Mine was going to be something along the lines of 'phptopython', where I could half document, half make a site about converting php code to python, or how to do similar things. I wanted it because I found it didn't exist when I was trying to learn Python. I figured if I knew what it was in php, it'd be easier to work on.

Then, like yours, I figured a wiki would be good, and have each page dedicated to a code snippet, whether it is "using trim" or "finding the square root of a number".

Haven't got around to it though

</comment><comment><USER17> Once you get past integers and strings I think you'd start hitting language and library limitations where things don't translate smoothly - the same core reason that the languages are usefully different in the first place.

Not at all web 2, but the PLEAC project ( <http://pleac.sourceforge.net> ) has been working on equivalent samples of code in different languages for a number of years.

These days I'd half expect it to be a crossbreed of Google Code and Google Translate.

</comment><comment><USER18> He also asked if anyone was offended if he linked to his own site. I've been wondering myself. I have been considering submitting some issues for discussion in the form of a two or three paragraph statement backed by an essay elsewhere. Given that the topic is of general interest to HN and is not self-promotional spam, does it fit with the HN etiquette?

</comment><comment><USER19> For operating systems, there's <http://bhami.com/rosetta.html>

<comment><USER20> That's vastly out of date - DGUX anyone?

I've started on a modern RHEL / Ubuntu / Powershell Rosetta Stone in my own time. Let me know if you want to see it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is a really good idea. Whenever I learn a new language, it is always a pain re-learning how to do common tasks.

Is anyone interested in working on this as an open source side project with me? My preferred stack is Python, Django, Appengine, and jQuery.

</comment><comment><USER22> Google would give you the answer if you just type any such phrase.

</comment><comment><USER23> Best quote in the article: "Web 2.0 baby, the users provide all the content, we make all the money."

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here, I am watching this thread but not replying to anyone yet, but I want to clarify this phrase. It's not really mine (at least its meaning) but I couldn't find who said it first to give credit, since the words aren't exactly how I typed.

Anyway, it's something that has bugged me for some time. Lots of "web 2.0" companies think that users will come and start to post a lot of stuff, and the reality is that unless you can give them some kind of semi-instantaneous gratification, they'll never post anything.

Wish I could find who said it first. I think it captures a lot of the hype behind the web 2.0 buzzword.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> can anyone else not find the link to the actual site. I can't. I tried <http://HTFITIP.com>

what's the url?

<comment><USER25> _I've been feeling lazy lately so go ahead and implement this if you want. Should be an useful tool._

There's no such site now. He wants someone to write this because he thinks it will be useful

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "how the fuck is trim in Python? It's called strip by the way."

too much sex in holland (fat in usa)</comment>


The bug that let me tweet from any Twitter account - <AUTHOR> https://henryhoggard.co.uk/?p=24

<comment><USER2> > Although the page does provide an authenticity token aimed at preventing > CSRF, it does not seem to validate that the token is correct, and therefore, > we can enter any value.

That is just damning. No way should that have been overlooked</comment>


NASA have found organic material on Mars - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2018/06/07/nasa-found-on-mars-announcement/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17258492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17258492)

220+ points</comment>


London, New York and Sydney could be underwater 'in our lifetimes' - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3978418/London-New-York-underwater-lifetimes-Scientists-warn-devastating-floods-West-Antarctic-ice-shelf-melts-inside-out.html <comment><USER2> How about something else that is not the daily fail?

</comment><comment><USER3> While Amsterdam, which already is below sea-level, will not.</comment>


Helprace is a customer service platform similar to Zendesk and Getsatisfaction - <AUTHOR> http://satisware.com

<comment><USER2> I'm looking exactly for a solution like this, and have been evaluating a few options (including Zendesk).

Your site really doesn't offer a lot of details. For example... How do the plans differ (other than price)? What does the knowledge base look like? Can I customize the look of the KB? ...</comment>


Google Knowledge Graph Search API - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/knowledge-graph/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty nice.

Google's knowledge graph is much, much better than any of the open data competition because they have done the work to make it consistent (not in the ACID sense but in the completeness sense)

For example, Wikidata appears good on the surface, but as soon as you try to build against it you find huge holes in the data.

As a more specific example, the most common example you will see on Wikidata is "list the cities with a female Mayor in order if population." Great, except it turns out that many (most?) cities aren't marked up with the attribute that makes them considered cities for the purpose of that query.

Knowledge APIs add typing to search. That's really important because it let's you disambiguate queries well (Apple computer vs Apple fruit) and behave more intelligently based on that type.

Things like the DDG API (mentioned in this thread) don't do that. DBpedia/Wikidata/Yago do it, but so inconsistently that the benefits are hard to make useful (as you are coding for the multiple ways types are handled).

<comment><USER3> The data was originally open, they closed it ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebase) ). You call it nice?

<comment><USER4> According to that Wikipedia article, Freebase moved their original data over to Wikidata before closing: [https://plus.google.com/109936836907132434202/posts/bu3z2wVq...](https://plus.google.com/109936836907132434202/posts/bu3z2wVqcQc)

<comment><USER3> Wikidata has a different license, it's just a PR piece that means little. How many facts have been imported since Jan 2015? Wikidata is at 15,473,837, Freebase (summer 2015) is at 3,146,939,673. Basically Google's Freebase shut- down throw AI research back at least two years (assuming Wikidata can catch up to 90% of Freebase size in 2018). Now Google, Microsoft and IBM have an competitive advantage - each has its own closed knowledge base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I query for "Software Engineer", I get:

        {
        "@type" : "EntitySearchResult",
        "result" : {
          "@id" : "kg:/m/0y49634",
          "name" : "Software engineer",
          "@type" : [ "Thing" ],
          "description" : "Fictional Character"
        }

<comment><USER2> It's picking up a bad reference from Freebase (see the id): [https://www.googleapis.com/freebase/v1/topic/m/0y49634](https://www.googleapis.com/freebase/v1/topic/m/0y49634)

That's disappointing.

<comment><USER6> Another one:

The second result in a query for "Rogan Josh" is "Jeremy Clarkson" a Person of "Top Gear" fame. Digging up the freebase record doesn't show any obvious reason why this would happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So will Google release open data dumps? Google Knowledge Graph is based on data what was known as Freebase (see various papers). Google is about to shut down Freebase at the end of 2015. Freebase got bought by Google and was kept open and had a great community. (WikiData is still several magnitudes too small to be an alternative)

And stalled Freebase data from summer 2015 gets more useless every day.

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

Paper: [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nlao/publication/2014.kdd.pdf](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nlao/publication/2014.kdd.pdf) (comparision table on page 3, compare Google KnowledgeVault, KnowledgeGraph and Freebase)

Microsoft bought Powerset (for Bing and Cortana AI), IBM recently bought Blekko (for Watson AI). Google closed Freebase and reuse it for KnowledgeGraph (GoogleNow AI and Search). That recent development hurts independent AI research and smaller AI companies.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, well, well. I know what I'll be playing with over the holidays. Some get Legos®, some get knowledge graphs.

But seriously, I've been playing around with Wikidata's Query Service[0]. Here's an example...[1], the example asks, "What is `nature' a part of?" (Once you click through the URL shortener you can click execute to run the SPARQL[2] query. SPARQL's a W3C recommendation, sort of like SQL but for triplestores, but its details are not readily graspable I think.)

It seems like Google's Knowledge Graph is based on Wikidata? I used to think the Semantic Web was always going to be a decade away but now I think that it is going to play a large part in the near future of the web though if you pushed me to explain my change in reasoning I don't think I'd be able. What we need are Semantic Web Browser, no idea what they'd look like though :(

Here is Wikidata's table of properties from which it builds up its entire knowledge graph[3]. I think it's fascinating.

[0] [https://query.wikidata.org/](https://query.wikidata.org/)

[1] [https://goo.gl/4mIJCL](https://goo.gl/4mIJCL)

[2] [http://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-query/](http://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-query/)

[3] [https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:List_of_properties/Su...](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:List_of_properties/Summary_table)

<comment><USER8> Wow, thanks! I didn't know there was a wikipedia knowledge graph. Looks like my holidays may be fun too :-)

<comment><USER9> There are tons of RDF sources out there if you'd like: [http://dbpedia.org/sparql](http://dbpedia.org/sparql) is generally accepted as a better curated resource (both in quality and quantity) [http://data.linkedmdb.org/](http://data.linkedmdb.org/) [http://www.rdfdata.org/](http://www.rdfdata.org/) I think the some subsets of the US federal government releases their data structured as such too

<comment><USER8> Excellent sources, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For a second I thought this actually gave access to the graph, so you could actually traverse it a la 'see the edges, visit the nodes', which surely would have piqued my curiosity. This doesn't seem to offer much more over HN user/DuckDuckGo operator Gabriel's API[1]. I have a console app I've written that queries WolframAlpha and DDG. Between the two, > 90% of my 'fast questions' get answered (with the added bonus of a decent privacy policy).

[https://duckduckgo.com/api](https://duckduckgo.com/api)

<comment><USER10> I used Knowledge Graph when I was a contractor at Google. Graph queries are not cheap, entity lookups should be inexpensive.

I am very happy that Google opened up this API. I used to use Freebase, and I use DBPedia a lot. When I get home from traveling I am looking forward to kicking the tires of the new API.

<comment><USER11> And it would be even better if Google would be required to provide full data dumps for download, like Freebase did before Google annexed them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious how the knowledge graph API performs disambiguation without any context. E.g., if you search for `Apple` will it return the company or the fruit?

<comment><USER13> I don't see how it could. If you search Google for apple, or even ask a person to give you information about the term "Apple", how can they give you what you need without further context?

<comment><USER9> The Knowledge "Graph"[1]offers an optional disambiguation parameter you can query with[2]. DuckDuckGo (I swear I'm not a shill or associated with them!) offers a disambiguation API out-of-the-box and integrates some of the RDF material I mentioned below. Here's your "Apple" example[3].

Though, based on the amount of data Google has on the average user, and the fact that you have to sign-up to get an API key which is presumably associated with your search history, Gmail history (either any conversations sent from your Gmail account, or any mail you received dispatched from a Gmail account directed at you), they could easily determine if you meant Apple the fruit [you work for the USDA], Apple the company [you're an engineer in SF with a User-Agent history that's very heavily skewed towards Safari], or etymological basis of Apple, the word [you're a linguist], and disambiguate based on aggregate information. I'd imagine it'd be pretty trivial to do with their existing advertising profile + visit history of any site that either has Google Analytics or a Doubleclick ad.

[1] Again, I struggle to call it a graph, even if it's implemented as a GDB on Google's end, until the end-user traverses it, it's just a Knowledge API.

[2] [https://developers.google.com/knowledge- graph/reference/rest...](https://developers.google.com/knowledge- graph/reference/rest/v1/) See: `types'.

[3] [http://api.duckduckgo.com/?q=apple&format=json&pretty=1](http://api.duckduckgo.com/?q=apple&format=json&pretty=1)

<comment><USER12> Really cool, thank! The `types` seem to be a good way to add context if you know, a priori, the type you're looking for.

Google definitely fuses user data into their knowledge graph. This is seen in Freebase's `g.` identifier [1]. I'm curious if they'd influence their publicly facing API algorithms using that data.

[1] [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/freebase- discuss/_8x...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/freebase- discuss/_8xdb8rCPJc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Woah this is neat. Would love to use this to make small & subject specific tools for K-12 schools.</comment>


GOD MODE UNLOCKED – Hardware Backdoors in X86 CPUs - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eSAF_qT_FY <comment><USER2> WOW. Watch the first four mins for demo, thats insane. "This isn't supposed to exist"</comment>


A Hacker's Introduction to Partial Evaluation - <AUTHOR> http://www.ymeme.com/hackers-introduction-partial-evaluation.html <comment><USER2> I wrote this article; while I don't mind the reposting (its original host is gone), they might have kept my name on it. Here's a repost on my own site: <http://wry.me/misc/peval.html></comment>