3 Black Teenage Scientists Had a Breakthrough, Then Came the Trolls - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/05/05/608558338/3-black-teenage-scientists-had-a-breakthrough-then-came-the-trolls <comment><USER2> I wonder why we do social media voting at all. Even if it isn't ruined by racist trolls it's still kind of silly isn't it?

How would a bunch of random strangers know which science project was good? And more importantly, why do we care what everyman Joe/Jolie has to say about anything? We've always had village idiots or people who stood on cardboard boxes and yelled about our impending doom, but when did we decide that it was a good idea to give these people a megaphone?

Personally I think it's rude as well. If I entered something cool into a science competition I'd appreachiate it if it was evaluated by people who actually knew something about science instead of entering some popularity contest.

<comment><USER3> Because it brings eyes to a project/company/product/etc.

Why do you think shows like American Idol or weekly music countdowns were so popular? The feeling of participating and having an impact generates interest. Similar to the rise in Video Game streaming and Youtube(comments).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read about this a couple days ago. Apparently this started the nonsense: [https://twitter.com/Pash_away/status/988951710524583937](https://twitter.com/Pash_away/status/988951710524583937)

Lots of varying levels of "wrong" to go around IMO.

<comment><USER5> Funny how none of the news mention that pro-black groups started the vote manipulation, which resulted in trolls escalating the manipulation.

<comment><USER6> Probably because stories that support an outlet's worldview/narrative are investigated far less than ones that challenge it. You can see the same issue with the story of that YouTube prankster supposedly 'thrown off a plane for speaking Arabic'; he wasn't (he was trolling people beforehand), but because it fit the '2016 election led to increased Islamaphobia/hatred of outsiders' worldview, it went unchallenged until others stepped forward afterwards.

It's not a pattern exclusive to one political side and their media outlets either; if a story sounds like it can be used to rally the troops and support a message, it won't be investigated too thoroughly regardless of whether it supports the left or right or centre or whoever else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Slight off-topic. I'm sure this has been said before, but I'm saddened to catch myself doing it. All my life I've been indifferent to matters of race, and so if I'd read 10 years ago about 3 black girls doing whatever I wouldn't have thought twice about it. But after what's been happening in recent years, I just caught myself thinking: "3 black girls? I wonder if they didn't win as part of the diversity quota" :-/ I maintain that "affirmative action" does more bad than good in the vast majority of the cases.

On-topic: In any case, prevalence of occurrences like the reported trolls are why I no longer give the benefit of the doubt to people who claim "there's no racism". For a while you had the excuse of not being aware, but now you're just intentionally adding noise to the conversation.

<comment><USER8> I've never met anyone who claims racism doesn't exist. Perhaps I haven't met the right troll?

The odd thing about racism is that we typically see it in the US as a asian/black/white/hispanic issue where historically race was finer grained, especially when talking about a much more homogeneous population.

Historically Brits would consider the French, Irish, or Italians as a different race, and, yes, have racist views about those people.

What I learn from that is, even if the US was 100% "white", racism would still exist as we would find increasingly small differences to categorize people into races and then discriminate.

The problem is that discrimination based on categorization is how the human brain works.

<comment><USER9> > I've never met anyone who claims racism doesn't exist.

The anti-affirmative action argument doesn't say that racism doesn't exist. The argument against affirmative action is that society should aim for equal opportunity rather than equal outcome.

<comment><USER8> Affirmative action IS institutional racism in that it codifies advantage to one race over another.

One could argue about the intention of affirmative action, but I don't think one could argue that it's not racist, using the dictionary's definition of racism.

<comment><USER7> > One could argue about the intention of affirmative action, but I don't think > one could argue that it's not racist, using the dictionary's definition of > racism.

As is often the case, the dictionary gives multiple definitions.

[http://www.dictionary.com/browse/racism](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/racism)

You're using definition number 2, the person you were responding to was maybe using definition number 3.

(Although we get it, your point still stands.)

<comment><USER8> That's fair, thanks.

What I was trying to say, without saying it, is that rasism is not what the cultural Marxist are trying to sell - "power + privilege".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It always bothers me when there are complaints of treating someone differently while also describing those persons as "hyphenated Americans". I don't think those, in this article, described themselves as such but you can't be the same and different at the same time.

<comment><USER11> Then how would you describe the reason that they were targeted?

<comment><USER10> That has nothing to do with my comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My solution- depersonalize all work. As in no faces, no interviews, no names- just a number and the work. Take the old web to reality- kick the whole social approach out of it. If writing styles or location give the work away, jumble and anonymize even that.

There will be no way human reeducation will ever work. There will no new - more human humanity appear by enough reeducation. So just make it one huge peer reviewed anonymized contest, even distribute some slang into other papers/ works and lets leave this all behind.

<comment><USER6> Reminds me of a similar idea I've often thought about regarding the court system; anonymise defendants when possible to remove the biases people have towards races, genders or human attractiveness.

Yes, it would likely be really difficult to do, and not work too well with eyewitness evidence or what not, but it may make prison sentences and punishments consistent between different social groups and demographics again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know there is a lot of confusion about the internet in the Eternal iPhone September, but why is NPR feeding the trolls?

The headline is effectively: "[thing happpend], [trolls trolled the thing]."

I don't like trolls either, but as best we can tell, they're an emergent phenomenon of the system. Either NPR doesn't understand the internet, or is trying to change the internet.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've always wondered whether 'freedom' encompasses freedom to be racist or hateful. But then again, the moment you bound the freedom, you have to allow others to bound other freedoms in their societies as well, which could very well lead to oppression, or even enslavement. It's a tough call.

<comment><USER15> It does in the US.

People seem to get confused though and expect that repugnant speech won't have any consequences.

<comment><USER16> > People seem to get confused though and expect that repugnant speech won't > have any consequences.

And for folks who scream "Free Speech doesn't mean Free of Consequence" and engage in harassment campaigns causing targets to lose jobs, homes, and everything else, I hope you're fine with the same thing happening to you when someone finds your views repugnant.

We're trying to push the societal ball forward, not revert to a state of digital Weimar-era street fighters engaging in mob justice.

<comment><USER17> What is your proposal for moving the ball forward? How would you deal with groups of racists trying to influence society?

<comment><USER13> Base society on strong foundational principles like liberty and justice. Give everyone the tools to properly evaluate ideas. Attempts to extinguish bad ideas should focus on arguing the point. Gradually the bad ideas will die out.

Every possible alternative relies on whoever is in power exercising condescending 'parent knows best' authority. And the rest of us just have to hope the whims of whoever is in power happen to align with ours. That's a bad way to run anything from the get-go, doubly so when the next generation takes over and is expected to know what the hell they're doing.

<comment><USER17> In the article we have a portion of society acting in their view of "justice".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Hundreds of schools across the United States have drinking water that is > contaminated by lead

How?

<comment><USER15> Typically from the building plumbing or the service line from the water main to the building. Both are customer responsibility to repair and a lot of school systems have limited funds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Meta-Comment: While I really don't doubt a bunch of racist trolls would do something like this, I've seen /b/ do enough dumb shit over the years, but I don't see why these papers (NPR, WaPo) don't at least include an example, i.e. screen-shot, of the calls for vote-rigging. Would make the cynic in me, and hopefully others, thinking this is a stunt for free press, like with the Clock Kid, go away.

<comment><USER19> NASA made the claim about vote rigging. You really think they would lie just to get some free PR ?

And the "clock kid" incident wasn't a stunt. The child was actually accused of being a terrorist, handcuffed and detailed by police. And then when the news spread he was subjected to continued racial and xenophobic taunts.

<comment><USER16> > NASA made the claim about vote rigging. You really think they would lie just > to get some free PR ?

Well, I thought journalists were supposed to do investigative work and not just publish a PR statement, but so is today's media.

> And the "clock kid" incident wasn't a stunt.

There sure were a lot of folks there saying he was pretending it was, and jokingly or not that's going to get you a real bad response in this day and age.

But since it "validates" a lot of folks' views on how the world is, of course they want to believe and parade it around.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is Common Cold incurable? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> "Well over 200 virus strains are implicated in the cause of the common cold"

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Because there are a ton of viruses that cause it, there are a lot of things that look like colds but aren't, things that _could_ kill a cold may be too high a risk since a cold is a relatively minor thing, etc. That said, there may (or may not) be broad-spectrum anti-virals on the way (1-2 decades)

This is trivially searchable on the web, btw, e.g., [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/you-cant-beat-the-common- co...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/you-cant-beat-the-common-cold-and- thats-a-fact/).</comment>


Video Interview:  Robert Scoble, top tech blogger, talks about Europe and Video - <AUTHOR> http://us.intruders.tv/Robert-Scoble,-top-tech-blogger,-talks-about-Europe-and-Video_a201.html

<comment><USER2> Scoble: Half Man, Half Machine</comment>


Two lessons from the Megaupload seizure - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2012/01/21/two_lessons_from_the_megaupload_seizure/singleton/

<comment><AUTHOR> Best part of the article:

      Congratulations, citizens, on your cute little "democracy"
      victory in denying us the power to shut down websites
      without a trial: we're now going to shut down one of your
      most popular websites without a trial.</comment>


CakePhP vs. Codigniter - <AUTHOR>

I started off in MySql and then moved to PhP and then ultimately to Codeigniter. (I have built 5 sites on Codeigniter) Recently, I took a new full time job where the website was built in foreign country and it was built on CakePhP. So now it seems like I have to downgrade my knowledge of MySql and Php.<p>Thoughts? Is there any easy way to convert CakePhp to Codeigniter or maybe Larvel? (Probably not, but I thought I would ask.) <comment><USER2> CakePHP, Codeigniter, and Laravel are all PHP frameworks, so not sure what you mean by "downgrade" your knowledge of mySQL and PHP. These frameworks simply make it easier to build applications using PHP and to interact with mySQL (along with other databases) using a MVC convention. If you understand the concepts behind MVC really the only challenge is mapping functionality between the frameworks. While initially it may be confusing to figure out that mapping as each framework does not have the same function names or implement a concept the same way, once you get the general idea of using the new framework it will seem much easier. My recommendation is to find and work through a couple sample applications in CakePHP. Get an understanding of the functions and how they are used before trying to dig into the actual code of the site. I would avoid converting entirely to a new framework though if you don't have to.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just recently built a site with Codeigniter after trying out Cake and Laravel. Codeigniter is really easy to implement and its pretty powerful and lightweight out of the box.

I do understand what you mean, its like building Wordpress for so long and suddenly you get a project in Joomla. Suddenly your flow is disrupted and you have to "downgrade" to another framework/platform.

In terms of converting, I think it would be best if you suggest refactoring it from bottom up. Since you mentioned its built in a foreign country, I am certain the variables, function naming conventions, file structure, etc aren't on point.</comment>


Hivelogic Podcasting Equipment Guide - <AUTHOR> http://hivelogic.com/articles/podcasting-equipment-software-guide-2011/ In December of 2009 I took a leap of faith, launched 5by5 Studios, and started broadcasting and podcasting full-time. In this article I share what I've learned about podcasting, videocasting, and audio recording gear. <comment><USER3> I was surprised to see the mention that dynamic mics are more expensive. Perhaps when looking at mics specifically designed for podcasting this is true, but not in general.

If you want a general purpose, gold-standard inexpensive mic, go with a Shure SM-58 or SM-57. They're designed for live performance, so they're really durable. They sound pretty good for the price, which is under a hundred bucks.

Also, it's weird that the article talks about "XLR mics" as if they're something special - XLR is just a type of connector, and it's the type that 99% of all mics use anyway. USB and anything else is the exception, and you're paying a big premium for a USB mic.

IMO if you ever plan on using your mic or the rest of your recording equipment for anything besides podcasting, you're better off NOT getting gear specifically designed for podcasting. No matter what you're recording, the fundamentals of a good sound are the same - a good mic, good preamp (which excludes most preamps built into live mixers, though the Mackie Onyx pres are pretty good), and a good analog to digital converter (which the Onyx doubles as too). If you get a condensor mic, you need to make sure your preamp has an option for "phantom power", which is what your mic will need in order to work.

Actually, the most important consideration here is YOUR VOICE. There's a reason that professional recording studios always have multiple vocal mics - different mics are best for different voices. If you've got a nasal or high- pitched voice, make sure you get a mic that can counter that and make you sound more soothing. If you have a deep voice (like me!), make sure you get a mic that can bring out the higher frequencies enough that you don't sound like a movie preview all the time.

Lastly, make sure your recording location is QUIET and has minimal echo/reverb. If you have to record halfway in a closet, so be it - <USER2> listeners will thank you.

<comment><USER4> _Also, it's weird that the article talks about "XLR mics" as if they're something special ..._

Not really. This is an article geared towards people used to amateur or, at best, prosumer computer mics. 99% of those are _not_ XLR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dan - Excellent guide - very informative!

What isn't mentioned is the video side which would be interesting to understand but also how the whole link with the guests thing works would be very interesting to understand too.

PS: Love 5by5 - keep up the great work.

</comment><comment><USER6> Call it a personal preference, but I'm not terribly impressed by asking for donations on a page loaded with Amazon affiliate links for fairly high-dollar items. I say this as someone who runs my own hobby site paid for entirely by affiliate links to Amazon and eBay.

An example of why I think it detracts from the article: You link to Monoprice.com for an XLR cable (good!) and then immediately link to a more expensive cable on Amazon. Why? Not because it's a better choice of cable, but because with any luck, someone will click through and you'll earn some cash. If you're going to link to a $13 mic cable for the opportunity to make money rather than just link to the $6 equivalent, what's to say half the links on the page are even genuinely good choices, or if you're linking to them because you'd potentially make an extra buck or two.

I'm not crapping on you loading up a blog post with affiliate links - I know that even before I signed up to eBay and Amazon affiliate programs, I often linked to them when telling people where to buy stuff, and now the affiliate programs simply paid me for doing what I always did. But doing that -and- asking for extra money if you found this post useful (presumably, finding it useful meant you bought equipment because of the post)? That changes the dynamic for me.

Addendum: I'd appreciate it if when you downvote me, you let me know what it is about my post that you didn't like or agree with.

<comment><USER7> It's his job, not his hobby.

I have a problem with affiliate links that are not marked as such, I certainly don't ever have a problem with asking for donations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I've added a line explaining that I use affiliate links too. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't mean to spam, but if anyone is looking to get the M-Audio Fast Track Pro referenced in the article, I have one that works perfectly but unfortunately doesn't get used enough. You can find my email in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Rode Podcaster is certainly good. Streets ahead of the Blue Snowball I had. It's what Andrew Warner uses on Mixergy too.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am curious about how Dan gets such great recordings from his co-hosts, who are remote. I'd have thought they record audio natively then upload him a high quality audio file with time sync, but then I remembered that he does these shows live, so that can't possibly be how it works.

<comment><AUTHOR> The 5by5 studio, though small, is pretty complicated (and unfortunately kind of expensive) to setup. We record all but 1 of our shows live, and edit them all before releasing them.

I'm planning on doing either another post or perhaps a video about the setup (assuming there's interest).

<comment><USER5> Excellent - I'd be interested in that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For the n-1 feeds do you just take a post fade AUX output from mixer and turn up each channel except theirs for that auxiliary?

</comment><comment><USER11> Any further recommendations on windows software? I'm not a Mac guy but would like to play with some podcasting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pro Tools is good for both Windows and Mac and although I haven't used it much, Adobe Audition is great on the PC (and though it's out for Mac, I still prefer Logic).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there hedgefunds for ordinary people? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
Recently I've been learning a lot about hedge funds and the markets, and I was wondering if there is any sort of investment vehicle that operates like a hedge fund but is open to small investment sizes from large numbers of people?
It could be a cool consumer focused hedge fund! <comment><USER2> To invest in a hedge fund, I believe you need to be an accredited investor. Basically, you need to make over $200k a year or have a $1,000,000 excluding your primary residence.

I'm assuming you don't consider an accredited investor to be "ordinary" in this context.

Mutual funds (and ETFs) operate relatively close to how hedge funds do, but without the risky behaviors and aggressive speculation. So, I guess, a mutual fund is probably a hedge fund for ordinary people, if you take ordinary to mean someone unable weather losing a ton of money in risky investments.

I think you can probably find some ETFs and mutual funds that take highly risky stances or short sell (inverse ETFs) and those are often open to small investments. I'm not going to share them because, well, I have no idea if they're worth putting money in.

<comment><USER3> So basically I don't have to have any qualifications to gamble in Vegas, but I need to have a million dollar home if I want to invest? Interesting.

<comment><USER4> <Wild Armchair Speculation> It comes down to what you're allowed to advertise I think. Vegas doesn't (and probably legally could not) market itself as a legitimate money-making investment, it's just selling games. Gambling = Entertainment expenditure with the possibility of prizes.

Meanwhile, hedge funds do market themselves as legitimate money-making investments, even if there is some risk involved. Unlike Vegas, who may welcome all comers who might pay the fee, hedge funds hold a fiduciary responsibility to act in their clients' best interests. That means having a policy on minimum assets or income to ensure that the clients whose money they are legally required to act in the best interest of would be able to somewhat safely absorb the losses associated with the short-term, higher-risk investments a fast-moving hedge fund might make.

On a different tack than marketing and fiduciary responsibility, nobody can sue Vegas when they bet it all on black and take a dive. Casino managers don't get daily calls from their patrons asking why the dealer keeps winning at blackjack. Hedge Funds ensuring that the people they're dealing with have lower income worries and likely some investment experience probably reduces their customer service load by a lot.

Although, after typing all this, it seems I was answering the question "Why is it alright for hedge funds to have minimum qualifications on investors?" rather than the question I think you were originally asking, "Why is it okay for Vegas to let people gamble without so much as a credit check?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not really. Technically firms like Blackrock do offer quant funds for normal people, which are, in theory, run like a hedge fund and use quant hedge fund type strategies.

In reality, these have no consistent record of outperforming index funds after fees. Many of the more boutique strategies are too small for them, as they are running billions of dollars.

</comment><comment><USER6> If I were looking for something like this, I would probably use these search terms:

\- leveraged etf

\- long short etf

</comment><comment><USER7> The definition of a hedge fund is a fund that takes high risks for the benefit of high capital gains. The average investor shouldn't be in a hedge fund and should stick to something like index funds.</comment>


An Oral History of Apple's Infinite Loop - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/apple-infinite-loop-oral-history/ <comment><USER2> A shame this was missed/overlooked/whatever by the HN crowd. Touching piece, some interesting anecdotes I've not heard before.</comment>


Xkcd: Is It Worth the Time? - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/1205/# <comment><USER2> Assuming you can automate the task completely, you'd get the added value of not having the context switch to and from that task. That alone would might be reason enough to automate something, even if you lose time over it.</comment>


Verifying Bit-Manipulations of Floating-Point [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/publications/papers/pldi16b.pdf <comment><USER2> Well the title is a little misleading but exact.

It is much more we finally have a reliable/proven way for estimating errors in floating point arithmetic for transcendental? operations notably on Intel platform.

Which is both impressive and important, and makes me wonder why it took so many times to appear while we use PC computers since so many years for non linear system with error amplifications (risk assessment, turbulent flows, n body problem).

I am like kind of surprised we make more and more use of computers for data crunching, that we give more and more precision on the results but few consider to check the exactitude : that results are less in value than the resulting errors propagated by all approximations.

It casts doubt on the seriousness of the industry.

</comment><comment><USER3> this looks like a really interesting paper, thanks for posting it.</comment>


The African Hacker News - <AUTHOR>

There used to be a news website like the HN for Africa-related stories/news sometime ago. I ran a search for it a lot of times in the past but no luck. Any news about it? <comment><USER2> Yes, I was the creator/host of the site but decommissioned it because there was no way to monetize the moderate traffic and I didn't have the time to invest in getting it to be bigger. I will revisit it in about a year, with a broader focus on business & tech in Africa. Email me at jkuria gmail and I'll let you know when it is back up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not the one your looking for but I've found interesting startup stories on [http://www.iafrikan.com/](http://www.iafrikan.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I find that funny by itself.

You ran a search for a news Aggregator and couldn't find it?

That's not a good sign it is very relevant right?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's ridiculous.It was very relevant. By the way, there are other resources like that that are no longer visible/retrievable online - no cache.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://rondera.com/](http://rondera.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> THe referred website doesn't fit-in. The African hacker news was pretty much like this hackers news save that it had a blue colour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was looking for that site too.</comment>


6GHz RISC-V core from Western digital - <AUTHOR> https://wccftech.com/western-digital-shows-two-new-swerv-risc-v-cores-for-microcontrollers/ <comment><USER2> 6.3 MHz, not GHz.

<comment><USER3> Neither - the original article at [https://www.westerndigital.com/company/innovations/risc-v](https://www.westerndigital.com/company/innovations/risc-v) mentions relative performance in Coremarks/MHz as 4.9 and 6.3, respectively. Giving a maximum operating frequency for a HDL description (which is what was made available) doesn't make much sense.</comment></comment>


Design and implementation of a simple Twitter clone using only a key-val store and PHP. - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/redis/wiki/TwitterAlikeExample

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry for posting this again, but now there is an article in form of a tutorial explaning the internals of the twitter clone. It was not possible to have it finished for yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER2> test</comment>


A week without Google - <AUTHOR> http://medium.stfi.re/@odedgolan/a-week-without-google-e1a6fe54649a?sf=qbenw

<comment><USER2> Original link without the tracking ( :( ) [https://medium.com/@odedgolan/a-week-without- google-e1a6fe54...](https://medium.com/@odedgolan/a-week-without- google-e1a6fe54649a)

</comment><comment><USER3> > HOWEVER for developers, any debugging or dev tools other than Chrome was > just a nightmare.

I can't really take that experiment seriously when reading this. Of course there are differences and I'm sure one can have strong preferences.

But in no way doing webdev using Firefox (and firebug if that's your thing) is a nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER4> Trading Google for Yahoo is just trading one company trying to track you around the web for another company doing the exact same thing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Strange alternatives at times... What was the real purpose of the experiment ?</comment>


Ask HN: Yet another Facebook chat privacy hole? - <AUTHOR>

From http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=84283397130
"Going Offline Alongside each list, you'll notice a green switch; when you turn off the switch, you'll be logging off of Chat for that list. Friends in lists that are switched off will not be able to see that you are online or chat with you, nor will you be able to see whether they are online."
However, if I open the Facebook iPhone app, and go to the chat view, I can see everyone who is online, regardless of whether or not they have placed me in a group that is set to offline. Note that this only occurs in the iPhone app - the website chat view is fine.
Can anyone else replicate this? <comment><USER2> Please use the syntax "Ask HN: [question]" in your title.</comment>


Ask HN: Overcoming Burnout / Imposter Syndrome - <AUTHOR> The past 2 years have been pretty rough for me professionally. At my previous job I was asked to lead a massive compliance effort that was doomed to fail, and then moved onto a team that had very little technical work and which was constantly blocked by internal politics. Instead of working on interesting technical projects I became bitter and cynical as it became increasingly clear it would be impossible to accomplish anything.
I found a new role with a small start-up where it seemed like I would be able to build meaningful things and collaborate with people again. I took some time off and tried to come at it with a clear head, but there have already been a few discouraging situations where I feel like my coworkers don't respect me. The work that I have done doesn't seem meaningful, it's kind of "leftovers" that nobody else on the team wants to do. On a few occasions I tried to make proposals but they were heavily criticized.
At this point I feel extremely isolated from the team, and like all I can do is stay out of the way and do what people ask. I'm constantly worried about being told I'm not good enough technically. I've basically given up on trying to have an opinion because it doesn't seem to matter.
Does anyone have advice? I feel like if I could take on one big project and be successful it might make everything click. But I've also read that working harder feeds into burnout and the best solution would be to disengage and take 3-6 months off. <comment><USER2> Step 1: Realize this says more about the team/org than it says about you. Don't internalize much of this. Recall some of the most difficult projects you've taken on successfully. If you have something to be proud of, remember that you actually are pretty talented.

Step 2: Consider that there's a high probability that you were hired to clean up the mess. Maybe your teammates would like nothing more than for you to jump on the grenades so they can tackle the high-profile projects and get the promotions. In this context it probably starts to make more sense what's happening here. Giving negative feedback is a cheap and easy way for your teammates to signal to management what the ranking order is (especially if management is non-technical or too busy to look at the details).

Step 3: Decide if it's worth staying. This could mean playing the long game. It could mean having a strategy to rep up with management behind the scenes. It could mean doing the hard work of shoveling in the trenches and playing code janitor to earn the respect. It could just mean collecting the paychecks and associating less of your identity with this job while you pursue hobbies, family, whatever else.

Spend some time with your teammates on a social level and find some common ground. If you all like each other first it's easier to work together and harder to criticize.

<comment><USER3> This is very insightful. Like, I've been on the other side of this (hoping this experienced new hire will fix up some of the mess I don't have time to do), and have probably never even realized it.

In fairness, if the new person is competent it's usually very clear early on, and they tend to move on to better things fairly quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I took some time off and tried to come at it with a clear head, but there > have already been a few discouraging situations where I feel like my > coworkers don't respect me. The work that I have done doesn't seem > meaningful, it's kind of "leftovers" that nobody else on the team wants to > do.

It's called "paying your dues" and exists in all industries. You need to earn respect of your new colleagues by doing some of that shitty work and doing it well. If all goes well, in a couple of months you'll be a part of the in-group and will get the interesting tasks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I said this in another thread but I've been in the industry for 10 years. I don't expect to come in and rearchitect things on day 1, but I expect the tasks to be meaningful. The stuff I'm working on isn't an on-ramp to bigger tasks or being better integrated with the rest of the team, it's a silo that nobody wants to touch.

If your perspective is that onboarding is basically hazing people have to do to fit in at your company, I think that's pretty messed up. The best places I worked at tried to get people to ship meaningful features that would have an impact quickly.

<comment><USER5> > it's a silo that nobody wants to touch.

There are multiple silos of this where I work, not necessarily because nobody wants to touch it, but because we just don't have enough people.

I've picked one of them up and my teammate now come to me for advice when they deal with this silo of stuff.

Don't underestimate the small things, unless they're things that does not need to be done, in which case you need to raise this at planning and explain how they are not necessary to waste effort on, and bury them forever.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been kind of deliberately vague, but after a couple months it isn't like I'm an expert on the area of the codebase now and other people come to me for advice. Other team members actively dodge working on this silo and everything just gets deflected to me. It doesn't feel like being a respected person who has experience with an area of the codebase, it just feels like shit rolling downhill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > On a few occasions I tried to make proposals but they were heavily > criticized.

I'm going to overload on metaphors, I hope you don't mind. :-) Sounds like perhaps you are encountering a cultural impedance mismatch. While you might be thinking that the way forward on some project is to get some shared knowledge and understanding of a problem you see needing a solution, this can sometimes be taken as idle speculation, when in fact it's an earnest attempt at vigorous debate.

If you find yourself in this situation, stop, relax, and take a deep breath. As others have noted, "trying / working harder" will not work. You need to try a different approach to get a different outcome.

Remember, in smaller outfits, "implementation is 9/10ths of the law". If you have some running code which solves or automates a problem, and is presented well, then only the most foolhardy of people will stand in your way. See if you can work up a prototype / proof of concept on the quiet, then demonstrate it. If it's truly worthwhile, or even if it isn't the reception you get should be all the message you need as to what to do next.

If all else fails, quit. No matter where you are, the opportunity set afforded by the world at large is bigger than your current situation. That's reason enough to be cheerful. Good luck. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ironically I'm a "implementation is 9/10ths of the law" believer, the proposals were PRs and working demos. Despite being a small start-up the team is not really into iterative development so much as lots of up-front planning and theory followed by big polished PRs.

I agree if I'm going to succeed I'll need to change my approach. I usually learn by doing and experimenting but it's tough to make incremental changes here to understand the codebase better

<comment><USER6> Wow. That's tough. If a working demo doesn't convince them, I'm not sure what will. "See this? Do you want this?" is a pretty simple question. Do they need more evidence of unit- and integration testing? Do they need some/more user feedback before proceeding?

Remember, some people don't listen to reason, some of your wise seed will fall on rocky ground, and don't try to teach a pig to sing. I'll stop now :-) Best of luck again.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's mostly code quality / style / archtectural objections. Some of which are understandable since I'm new to the codebase and it's a prototype to show the feature, but taken together all the feedback basically rewrote the entire feature. I've pretty consistently had better experiences contributing to large open source codebases than getting a feature into this codebase so I don't necessarily think it's that I'm bad at receiving feedback?

<comment><USER7> They might be seeing you as a threat, because they think you might be trying to steal their light.

<comment><USER6> I used to not want to believe this kind of thing, but when I started to believe in it, quite a few situations became simple to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This doesn't read like Imposter Syndrome, but rather not being aligned with culture/way of working of your current company/team. I've been in that situation and tried working harder. It just made the problem bigger.

If you have a good leader that you trust in your company, have this conversation with him/her. Approach this in a way of how you can be of more value, rather than criticizing the team.

</comment><comment><USER9> For me, this has been all about taking short breaks and understanding when to stop at the end of the day.

In order to improve you have to ride yourself pretty hard (otherwise you start running into the opposite problem of not improving or stagnating) but understand when you're starting to "hustle" which is a waste of energy.

Having a good means to re-charge is also essential. Always work to resist conceit / convincing yourself you're being productive when you're not. This is the quickest route to mental illness / burnout by far IMO.

</comment><comment><USER10> That's a frustrating situation.

I've been in it. My work was heavily criticised, my technology choices invalidated, other's choices foisted on me. I was moved into silo-like work. A particular colleague liked to criticise colleagues in their absence, and I was part of those he spoke about - backbiting. This created a sense of exclusion.

This all started when we got a new engineering manager who I didn't click with. I wanted to stay until my tenure was long enough, and to leave with a respected reputation. Here's how I handled it:

1\. If there's a tenth of an ounce to learn from the heavy criticism, learn it, improve on it and thank the colleague.

2\. Being pushed into technology I had little experience in, I was worried it affected my reputation of competence; I worked hard to learn the new technology, learn from my company's existing code and industry best practices, and pushed to implement it as best as I could. That I worked in a silo meant no one's work depended on mine, and I had time to polish and test to push my work better.

3\. When my colleagues report their work in my presence, if there's any part of it that demonstrated competence that I understood or had something to learn from, I pointed out specific aspects that made it good.

More than a year on, this has paid off. I am in a new job using the new technology my colleagues gave me a opportunity to learn. Learning from criticisms really helped me with improving how I deploy design patterns. My relentless struggle to maintain positivity in the face of hostility repaired relationships with some, and built on them with others. This gave me strong references and recommendations. The new job I got paid 20% more, at a time when there was a sudden flood of layoffs due to the coronavirus.

</comment><comment><USER11> It gets better. Respect comes with time. I would be patient and play the long game. I've been through this at every job I have ever had. I didn't go to an IVY league school and others held it against me. You must not give up. Your time will come.

<comment><AUTHOR> For some more background, I've been working in the industry for 10 years. In the past imposter syndrome was a barrier but there was interesting work and I got regular feedback from my team that made me feel included. It's only recently that I've become apathetic and withdrawn from giving my opinions.

<comment><USER6> This is known as "not putting your hand back on the stove". Perfectly understandable. Next, please realise that you need to be in a place where your experience is valued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This sort of situation is complex, and painful. Please take care of yourself. If the culture is toxic, this job may not be the right fit.

If you want to stick it out in the hopes that a breakthrough is coming, perhaps you want to set goals or milestones. A time-based milestone could look like "I will give this three more months." A criteria-based one might be "I will continue if I receive some affirmation of my abilities this week." Of course, some combination of time and criteria is in order.

Advice falls short in such scenarios. I really hope you find meaning and growth at work, one way or another.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm sorry you're going through this. You're absolutely right that working harder is not the solution.

My advice would be to talk to the team or HR about your negative experiences.

If that doesn't help update your resume/portfolio and start finding a new job. (while you're still employed) Please don't stay too long in such a toxic environment - it's not worth it. I don't know you but I don't think you will have a hard time getting a new job.

You can get rid of the imposter syndrome with the help of a cognitive behavioral therapy.

I wish you all the best.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind advice :)

My worry is that jumping immediately to a new job might just restart the cycle, especially during COVID when I can't interact with the team in person.

I am working with a psychologist but I might try and focus more specifically on the imposter syndrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think most people at most jobs with stressful deadlines, engineering work, and where individual productivity is measured/praised, feel the same way you do. You aren't crazy or broken for feeling the way you do. Most companies/engineering departments talk about trying to nurture a healthy/pleasant working environment, but that doesn't mean most companies succeed in those efforts. With clients and bosses demanding things constantly, it's not surprising that work environments tend to fall into a negative state despite the noble efforts of a few employees or a VP that talks about building a pleasant work environment.

It sounds like you didn't love your last job, you tried a new type of company (in terms of size of employee count), and you don't love this job or long term project you are working on. There are pleasant companies with fun projects out there to work for, but they are much less common than the companies that suck to work for. Maybe you should write out a list of attributes that you assume an ideal employer/project has, and then start interviewing for those companies/jobs. If you hate your next job as well, rinse and repeat.

Remember your manager is your boss not your friend, so opening up to them that you are unhappy could lead to you being let go or whatever. If you aren't financially stable for 6 months, I wouldn't even tell them this stuff, I would just start prepping for job interviews during off-work hours and try get a new job. If you are comfortable not earning a paycheck for 3-6 months, I would tell my manager this stuff, see what they say, I would not go to HR before manager unless my manager like physically/sexually assaulted me or something. If manager wasnt helpful, I would then go to HR.

At my last job I felt like i was pegged as the dummy on the team, no big deal lol. I think i deserved to be pegged the dummy, maybe you do maybe you don't, regardless of that, you shouldn't worry about it or burn yourself out trying to impress your coworkers because of it (this could all be in your head as well).

Just know, if they are going to fire someone, it might be you and not one of the other all-stars on the team. Try accept that this is out of your control and not stress about it.

What did I do in my last job that i was unhappy with? I spent a few months prepping to interview in off-work hours, eventually I asked for a raise, got denied my raise, interviewed around for a month, and got a new job.

FYI I've worked at a Fortune 500 company (big IT consultant 100,000s of employees), two midsized company (1000ish employees), and two smallish companies > 300 && < 1000\. Most places sucked day to day TBH.

</comment><comment><USER15> Work on a personal project to get satisfied on a personal and technical level. A job is just a job, if you don't like it, go for another one.</comment>


Why software engineers don't get jobs: Three horror stories - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/why-software-engineers-dont-get-jobs-three-horror-stories-77fd1ae3b875 <comment><USER2> I think I've been rejected for all 3 reasons:

1\. Docusign, for not using Coffeescript, Angular, and Stylus (3 technologies I had never previously used) to solve their very long take-home test. I apparently provided a great solution, but they were concerned that I didn't follow those rules specifically. No, I'm not going to spend hours getting up to speed on your framework just for an interview, nor am I going to submit sub-standard solutions to to conform to your arbitrary restriction of using the framework du-jour.

2\. Google, for not being able to, "prove a random number is truly random," during my onsite interview panel. The guy offered no hints when I wasn't sure where to start, he simply continued to repeat the question, a bit slower each time.

3\. A local Seattle startup, who required 3 onsites: A technical, a culture, and then a full-day of "integration" (working on real problems with the team). I apparently passed the first 2, but was not invited to the 3rd. Turns out the HR director that was working with me quit before scheduling the 3rd. I never found out until after I had already accepted another position.

<comment><USER3> >Google, for not being able to, "prove a random number is truly random,"

I really hope they just wanted you to argue that the task is impossible.

<comment><USER4> Reminds me of a question one interviewer asked me to do at the very beginning of the session when I did my first onsite at Google - write a regex for emails. I told him no, and explained why. He then asked me to write a naive email regex to catch a simple situation, which I subsequently did.

<comment><USER5> This makes sense as an interview question.

Will the interviewee push back when asked to do something impossible?

Will they then demonstrate that they can do some simpler case (which will minimize mental switching costs for both the interviewee and interviewer)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would not take excuses like this for rejecting a candidate, especially a _highly qualified /skilled candidate_, at face value. Despite the pervasive rhetoric about wanting the "best" or hiring only the "best," both individual interviewers and companies as a whole are often afraid of hiring candidates who know more or are more skilled than themselves. The unstated fears include that the candidate will, if hired, outshine colleagues, his or her boss, or even, in some cases, the founder or CEO of the company -- especially in the case of startups where venture capitalists or other investors could be impressed by the new hire.

Since it is usually not acceptable to reject an applicant for this reason, some pretext will be generated. One way is to focus in on some area where the candidate is weak or different such as using a different software tool. Another way is to use trick questions or problems.

This is an article on how this was allegedly done in academia in the Soviet Union:

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1556.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1556.pdf)

<comment><USER7> OP here

Actually, I had drafted _" Horror story 4: Candidate was rejected because he was better than the interviewer"_ but I thought it is too complex to be included. I might write a whole blog post about it. Thanks so much for linking to the paper.

<comment><USER7> Just included fourth story in the original post but will write an extensive thing about this topic.

<comment><USER8> really cool to see live updates like this.

thanks for the good stories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have had some sad rejections over the years.

I remember one company rejected me a few months ago for not knowing enough algorithm/data structure knowledge - I subsequently passed interviews with two teams at my current employer, one of the famous big tech companies.

I had a startup pass on me as well that prior job search for reasons unknown even after acing their interview. I found out only 2-3 weeks after interviewing, and I think they're still trying to hire for the position (it uses Angular 1 - I also happen to probably be still one of the most knowledgable people about Angular 1 outside of Google).

I got insight into one company's interview process after doing a take home project, and one person mistakenly replying to all with me in the email chain - the person didn't think highly of my work on it, despite that I only spent 4 hours (the time I could spare on it) and kept clean abstractions, setup, and accomplished the main point of the take home project. That experience cemented to me that take home projects are a race to the bottom with it being necessary to spend an extraordinary amount of time and little reward back.

Amazon ghosted me while we were in the process of setting up onsites in San Francisco and we were taking about compensation in parallel (they started the comp conversation) - I'm pretty sure they did so after a few back and forths due to not being willing to bend on comp numbers. I still get emails from recruiters about 10 times a year from them.

I'm sure I've had others, pretty sure most people who've been in the industry for a while gets them if they have interviewed around.

<comment><USER7> Well, salary negotiating is hard, it's usually the part programmers like most during my talks on "how to hire software engineers": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be&t=1596)

<comment><USER4> That's fine, but ghosting while also in the process of setting up an onsite is pretty bad, especially for a company that should be at the stage where they get that right. There's no good reason for that behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1\. Honestly, if I were giving a simple coding exercise and the candidate submitted work using their own custom framework (which is implied here), I _might_ reject them also, or at least put them at the bottom of the interview list. It's just a complete misread of requirements, and points to an inability to follow directions.

2\. On the one hand, Joel Spolsky created a lot of problems with his idea that a "no" from any interviewing dev results in a "no". Some people just don't evaluate interviews very well.

OTOH, everything looks like it went well here. One interviewer voiced concerned about a specific technical field, but the team as a whole gave that item its appropriate weight. No problem.

3\. Yeah, HR often sucks. But I don't see how a story about the recruiter completely dropping the ball for two months is somehow a defense of how valuable recruiters are.

<comment><USER10> I'm with you on 1) because I've worked with these kind of people before; smart people who disregard existing solutions AND disregard team choices for technology stacks. Their code is impossible to integrate, difficult to test, difficult to review, and impossible to support. But by god they think it's the better way.

<comment><USER11> You cannot deduce from that that that engineer is one of "these people." There is not enough information in the situation to draw that conclusion. It's like claiming, solely based on your remark, that you are one of those people who jumps to conclusions prematurely. It doesn't work like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Now try being not an ex-googler, or not so great on the spot. Have been a great Python developer for years but personally have given up on jobs that require "tech" interviews.

<comment><USER13> I have to encourage you not to give up on all tech interviews. (By that I think you mean "hands-on"/"practical" type tests).

I do hiring for our agency, which consists entirely of non-rock-stars, at non- rock-star pay, solving non-rock-star problems, in non-rock-star time. We still do practical tests for all interviews. Some people, actually, do just get up and walk out. I wish they'd at least look.

We do problems on the level of "fizz-buzz" or similar. Quick 10-20 minute problems. We don't make full completion a binary success/failure metric. We just want to hear you discuss your thought process and see that you're aware of variables, if statements, and for loops. Because, yeah, turns out some candidates who claim years of programming experience ... aren't.

But no tricks. And we also make sure the request is suitable to the resume (think about it as resume validation). So we wouldn't say "Python person, write a method for us in C#" or vice-versa. Smart people can easily cross- train themselves once the job starts. It's more about finding someone who has the fundamentals and can apply them.

In conclusion, I would defend the hands-on "tech" interview as necessary and not even evil.

<comment><USER14> You might not make full completion a binary success/failure metric but so many other companies do, that people assume any random tech interview will be like that. Its anecdotal but both my friends and I all have the same experience of making a single mistake and seeing the interviewer visibly check out of the rest of the interview, and only getting offers from places where you passed every aspect of their interview correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well at least they all got replies. I have had at least 3 interviews where I did a take home exercise and didn't even get a reply. Unless I really want the job I refuse them now. I have a decent score (top 5%) on Stack Overflow for my tech of choice, so do I really need to waste an afternoon or more writing some mini application for you?

<comment><USER7> "if no one follows up, it does not mean no", that is what I learned after doing recruiting for some time: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be&t=2415)

<comment><USER16> My time is valuable.

About a year ago, I interviewed with a couple of companies. One particular interview I thought went very well. They never got back to me so I kept doing interviews and eventually landed a job that I love.

About a month later that company finally got back to me and wanted to set up a final/offer discussion.

I told them that because they took so long, I wasn't interested.

I'm not going to wait around and hope you get back to me, my time is more valuable than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell I was recently contacted by a company whos CEO had read some stuff that I'd written online and asked me to interview at their place. Their interview consisted of:

1\. A logic test.

They sent me a bunch of logic questions unrelated to programming or my abilities as a programmer. I had a certain amount of time to answer and submit the questions. Sounds like something dreamed up by a HR droid with no knowledge of programming, but I went with it.

2\. A programming test.

They sent me a list of instructions for a thing to build. I can't remember how long I was given, but it was something like a full days work, and I needed it.

I submitted the work. Heared back a few weeks later that they decided to hire somebody else. No conversation about the work whatsoever. I logged into skype today and noticed that the developer who sent me the instructions for the thing to build, tried to contact me 3 days later to ask where the work was. Even though earlier in the conversation I provided a link to the gitlab repo. Ultimately, I don't even know if they looked at my work. I don't know why they called it an "interview" seeing as I never actually held a conversation with anybody.

Next time a company contacts me because they think they might want to hire me, I'm going to demand an interview. If your interview is a series of tests, you can get lost.

<comment><USER17> > They sent me a bunch of logic questions unrelated to programming or my > abilities as a programmer

How can logic questions be "unrelated" to programming?

<comment> mike-cardwell Quite easily?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been on both sides of the table and the reality is that high stakes full day interviews kinda suck - they're noisy and tuned for high false positives (if they're even tuned at all).

Sometimes people get lost solving a problem, or don't ask clarifying questions, or are just too nervous, drank too much coffee, or maybe just didn't get a full night's rest. For most processes - it usually takes more than one bad round but one bad round can rattle a candidate who can cascade.

I like to think i'm a decent interviewer (and interviewee - not particularly gifted at CS but I've run enough rounds to recognize most problem types) I've gotten offers from 'big 5' companies but have been rejected by some as well. One reasonably well respected tech company wouldn't even screen me. Just a vague rejection, 'not a good fit at this time'. Who knows why - resume went to a busy team lead who looked at it for 5 seconds and took a dislike to some word choice. Or maybe they were on a hiring freeze and the 'open positions' were just for show. Maybe the non-technical recruiter didn't recognize the technologies listed actually matched what they were looking for. Who knows. The process sucks. Everyone knows it sucks. Maybe 'of all the processes it sucks the least' Churchill-style. I think it's slowly getting better, people are getting more objective - less stupid brain teasers. As engineers we want things fixed fast (like a merged PR) but people driven processes move and change slowly.

</comment><comment><USER19> My belief is most people would secretly like to hire (or see hired) people who are just a little less smart and/or a little less able than themselves. So this dynamic is often at play under the covers.

The exceptions to this are truly great managers and co-workers and companies that have a bright future but unfortunately it's kind of rare IMOP.

<comment><USER7> You are now the second person mentioning this in this thread ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15682260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15682260))

I really had this case where a 22yr old open-source contributing child-prodigy programmer would be rejected at the code-screening phase by a guy, let's call him "Jon". We had a phone call with three people: HR, Jon and me.

The reasons why Jon rejected the candidate were all a bit funny and I could not tell if Jon was serious or not. Also, Jon's Github contributions, pull requests and other things were rather shitty anyhow, but he was responsible for the first screenings so I had to listen to his feedback.

Jon pinpointed to some problems in the candidate's code which were more style and not problems. Other things had good reason (verbose try catch blocks). When I started to get defensive and mentioned that the quality of the submission is better than Jon's stuff on Github, HR stopped me and told me "We're not assessing John here"

Added it to the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> 2 and 3 are relevant and generally applicable, and basically boil down to:

2\. HR had arbitrary unreasonable box-ticking requirements rather than assessing the candidate intelligently

3\. HR was hopelessly disorganised

The first one however seems subjective. Maybe the candidate wasn't suitable for the role - the recruiter thinks he was the best frontender he'd found that year, the tech lead disagreed with his assessment. It does seem like the company HR handled things badly afterwards (incompetent HR is a bit of a theme here) but the original reason for rejection might have been valid.

<comment><USER21> In the first case, the tech lead discarded the candidate without looking at him/her seriously or interviewing, just by looking for a few minutes at the submitted piece of decent code and finding it somewhat unusual.

<comment><USER22> The article said that the interviewer looked for 10 minutes at the code. If it was really just a simple assignment and the candidate came up with a complex homemade framework then that is enough time to cast some very serious doubts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 1\. As an engineer I would definitely not work with a team that comes up with the first reason for rejection (Provided that I have not mentioned that stack on my resume to begin with).

2\. The second reason is more of a choice of the given company. There are companies on the other hand which give out an offer all based on cultural fit. More than often good interviewers never make a decision on the result of the puzzles but on how the candidate approaches it. Downside is that not all people are up for it in the interview hour even if they are really smart otherwise.

3\. Third is bad luck (cause of disorganized recruiting). The delay in response has something to do with the candidate too, how much vulnerable they are for the job. Personally I discuss the expectations for the interview process beforehand which is super helpful since I almost always get the feedback the next day irrespective of whether its an offer or rejection.

On the flip side there should be another discussion on how engineers get the jobs. I am sure those stories would be interesting too. It is not about the technical competency for majority of the times. Interviewing is an art and the candidates who are able to make the interviewers feel good about themselves have much more chances of offers.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been rejected from Facebook at some moment. I assume that happened, because we had some sort of disagreement with the interviewer. That seemed like a system design question, and at some moment I suggested to use SHA256 hashes to identify unique arbitrary long human input sequences (no malicious intent assumed).

And he asked me what would I do if there's a collision. Estimating probability of such collision to under about 10^-40 over span of 30 years of everyone on Earth typing input for that system at max speed did not convince him there's no need to handle collisions, and he kept insisting on that question.

Well, I got hired by another big company here, on a more interesting project.

</comment><comment><USER25> It seems to me that using those websites(stackoverflow, linkedin, whatever else) for landing in jobs is a big waste of time for prospective employees because of how messy and quirky the hiring process is. Most of the people I know that have been successful at being hired by big companies had some kind of (living, breathing) coach to walk through the process.

Am I the only one seeing that pattern?

<comment><USER7> The signal-to-noise ration and linkedin is surely very low nowadays. I am actually working on a article describing what I learned hiring and firing freelance recruiters who work mainly with Linkedin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Recently experienced No. 3 in form, was scheduled with the wrong person and the remote conference room was empty. Turns out the interviewer was another person in their own other room. Emailing the HR rep ten minutes in resolved the issue within five mins.

</comment><comment><USER27> Iwan, another angle to diversify from other recruiters - orient (at least partially) on REMOTE.

</comment><comment><USER28> 3\. Forgotten

Huh? Where was the follow-up from the applicant?

Always follow up.

<comment><USER7> Yeah but engineers usually don't, and that is why I try to "teach" them: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6PTaTDHUG4&feature=youtu.be&t=2424)

"if no one follows up, it does not mean no"

<comment><USER29> It's a good thing to do when you are in sales. Your entire job consists of contacting people. My job, as a programmer, is writing code. I will write and re-write code until it works so I understand you. However, contacting people is not my job. If somebody contacts me and then goes silent - it's just unprofessional in my view. Why would I want to deal with a company, which hires HR who are not able to respond to emails? For all I know they also hire accountants who are unable to cut paychecks.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook now requires your Social Security number to buy political ads - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/technology/facebook-ads-social-security-number/index.html <comment><USER2> Weren't they all leaked already?</comment>


FreeBSD 12.2-BETA1 - <AUTHOR> https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2020-September/092680.html <comment><USER2> I really like FreeBSD, and I run it on my home server, but the whole update process really needs a lot of work. The process described in this announcement is accurate in my experience: Run freebsd-update twice, reboot, run freebsd- update again, reinstall or rebuild applications, reboot again, run freebsd- update yet again.

The upgrade process works well, but it's much more manual than it is in the Linux world.

When PkgBase[0] becomes a thing, I hope that the process will be closer to the Linux world.

The other thing that hurts the upgrade process is the lack of packaged software. My big pain point is currently PostgreSQL 12+PostGIS 3.0. This combination in FreeBSD isn't a thing, the packaged/ported PostGIS 3.0[1] is for PostgreSQL 11. My solution has been to build PostgreSQL 12 from ports (because the packaged version doesn't include XML support, which I also want) then build PostGIS 3.0 from source, after installing all its dependencies from packages. I have to rebuild PostGIS after most FreeBSD upgrades since it links against now-changed libraries. If I were doing this in the OpenSuse world I would just use the Applications:Geo repository[2] and be able to install the right combination of software very easily.

Because of these issues, I'm slowly moving towards using FreeBSD to host VMs running whatever OS/distribution is most appropriate for the job. Moving PostgreSQL off of FreeBSD will greatly simplify my upgrade process.

[0] [https://wiki.freebsd.org/PkgBase](https://wiki.freebsd.org/PkgBase)

[1] [https://www.freshports.org/databases/postgis30/](https://www.freshports.org/databases/postgis30/)

[2] [https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/Application:Geo](https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/Application:Geo)

<comment><USER3> Why do you not use poudriere? And build automatically everything from ports then install the build-ed packages on you machine's?

<comment><USER2> This is something I've been meaning to look into, but it still doesn't change the postgis30/postgresql11-server dependency in the current ports tree.

I'm sure I could work around it, but then I start to ask myself whether I'd rather do FreeBSD software administration or create an OpenSuse VM, install the packaged software (which is already the right version and already has the right config options), and work on my GIS project.

<comment><USER3> >but it still doesn't change the postgis30/postgresql11-server dependency in the current ports tree

If you tell make.conf that postgres12 is the default it will compile postgis for that version, same with php/ruby/mysql and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really looking forward to tinkering with this. Is it me, or does it seem that the BSDs are really losing more and more mind share as time marches on? I have very few issues with FreeBSD or OpenBSD beyond the occasional incompatibility, and it's always something minor like suspend or sound that can fixed with a few queries.

<comment><USER5> I started using FreeBSD on a VPS a couple months ago, and I've moved my home router to be FreeBSD -- PF is /so much better/ than anything else wrt understandability, and putting miscellaneous services the router runs in jails is pretty nice, and feels simpler to set up "right" than the same with Docker (e.g. no messing around with Docker volumes, only to discover you've accidentally deleted years of family photos).

<comment><USER6> > you've accidentally deleted years of family photos

Oof, that hurts.

I'm going to add a check right now to PhotoStructure to assert that people's library is not stored within the container to prevent this from happening to my users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can see the schedule for the release on this page: [https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.2R/schedule.html](https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.2R/schedule.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Does mount_smbfs support SMB2 at last?

<comment><USER3> Yes with the latest Sambaserver you have everything Linux has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As someone who has been using FreeBSD for a long time on various machines of mine, both physical machines in my home and VMs in the cloud, I'm wondering how many people (both in absolute numbers and in percentages) run the beta releases on their hardware.

My general impression, which stems mostly from the description I once read on the FreeBSD downloads page and from elsewhere is that if you want to help find bugs in upcoming releases you run the CURRENT branch and else you run RELEASE. But I expect that there are people running the beta releases as well who make meaningful bug reports that result in fixes prior to release versions being minted – otherwise I think they would not be making beta releases still.

I did used to run CURRENT for a while, but eventually found out that personally I wasn't making any particularly helpful bug reports based on it anyways so I went back to RELEASE.

For the VM server that I have been using for many years now for sending and receiving mail, as well as to host some websites of mine, running FreeBSD RELEASE has been working great for years.

Meanwhile, my desktop computer which is currently running FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE is having issues where it freezes and requires a hard reboot. But I had this same kind of issue when I was running various Linux distros on this same desktop computer over the past years. I am suspecting that either it is a cause of hardware malfunction or possibly of the Nvidia driver for the graphics card, but I don't really have any way of finding out what the actual problem is. Not the least because of the fact that it will often run for a week of being powered on perfectly fine (both with FreeBSD and Linux distros) until suddenly it just completely freezes. Doesn't react to mouse, doesn't react to keyboard, doesn't respond to ping.

The fact that my desktop computer can run fine for about a week at a time makes it hard to figure out what the actual problem is. Say that I were to pull the graphics card out for example, and it ran fine for two weeks. How do I know at that point that I can really blame the graphics card and it wasn't just random chance that made it run for longer than usual this time around?

I think in order to isolate the problem I would have to build like 8 different physical machines all with the same hardware, and then say ok four of the machines I will initially run like I do with my current desktop, and four of them I will pull the graphics card out of and then have them running 24x7 for a month or until at least two of the machines with Nvidia graphics cards crashed if sooner. At that point I might conclusively say there is strong evidence of problems with the Nvidia graphics cards or with the drivers for said cards.

But if the machines without the Nvidia graphics cards were also crashing then I'd need to swap out for example all of the motherboards and I'd run the experiment for another week. An so on.

On the flip-side, if all of them ran fine for a month with the initial configuration I would conclude that probably some of the hardware in my current machine is just broken, and that there is no bigger issue at play. But all of that would cost not just a lot of time but also a lot of money. And as- is the next thing I can afford to buy is certainly not such an amount of hardware – the next thing I am going to buy when I can afford it is rather a couple of new hard-drives, as the spinning disks that hold most of my data are getting a few years old and I am getting quite nervous about them suddenly going to fail me. I've had hard-disks fail on me in the past. In particular I used to have a machine with 4x 2TB hard-drives in it to provide me with ZFS storage, and then I moved houses and I accidentally dropped my computer from about 1 meter height and last time I tried to see if the drives were working none of them showed up neither after boot nor in BIOS, neither in the original computer that I had dropped nor in the desktop computer that I have now. Well anyways it don't matter too much, none of the data was that important really. And I think said drives were making unusual noises also but I don't quite remember as it was a while ago now. But that kind of experience, along with having had some external hard-drives fail me in the past, does feed into the worry that I have for my current hard-drive as it is getting a few years old now.

But back to what I was saying about trying to debug the issue with my desktop. In theory I could disconnect basically all but the RAM and the CPU from the motherboard (well, and but the fans of course :P) and boot a minimal kernel from a USB stick and have it run in RAM and let it stay powered on for four weeks and see if it crashed, and then if it doesn't to connect the SSD and the HDD to it and run it for another four weeks and see if it crashes, and then to run the regular RELEASE kernel on it for four weeks and see what happens, and after that with the graphics card connected and see what happens for the next four weeks. But all of those weeks man. I just want my desktop to work, I don't want to spend weeks with it running on its own without being available for my use.

Anyways, that brings me to something else related to the testing that people do and that is the fact that I find it kind of hard to know what hardware to pick for a FreeBSD desktop. There's things like [https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.1R/hardware.html](https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.1R/hardware.html) and [https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics](https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics) and [https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/AMD-GPU- Matrix](https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics/AMD-GPU-Matrix) but they all seem kind of out of date.

If I had the money to buy the hardware for it and to pay the electric bills for it I would gladly be running a bunch of machines in different configurations of current consumer hardware and making notes and filing bug reports and hardware compatibility reports to help other users of FreeBSD and Linux. Maybe someday. Until that day I'll just have to accept that every week or so I might have to hit that hard reset button on my desktop, inconvenient as it might be.

<comment><USER3> >Until that day I'll just have to accept that every week or so I might have to hit that hard reset button on my desktop

That really must be your Hardware, i have FB12.1-REL and it's rockstable on 5 different Machines from 10yo to 1 two laptops and three Workstations.

And many many VM's and two really big physical servers

<comment><USER9> A few thoughts that I have about my hardware are:

\- I wonder how many other people use Nvidia graphics cards on FreeBSD and on Linux.

\- A few years ago I used to mine crypto on my graphics card. I made like $20 from it, so if the graphics card is physically in bad shape and this is what caused it then gg on my part for ruining a ~$390 graphics card in order to make about $20.

\- The PSU is probably the oldest component in my computer. In fact I think the store I bought it from has been shut down for many years even; that's how old that PSU is. Could it be supplying my computer with bad quality power? Maybe.

\- My RAM is of the non-ECC variant. Could cosmic rays be to blame for the crashes? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ The BOFH would certainly have said that this was the reason, but even in the real world it could be maybe?

<comment><USER3> > Nvidia graphics cards on FreeBSD

Many it's official supported

>A few years ago I used to mine crypto on my graphics card

Mining does not damage your card

>My RAM is of the non-ECC variant.

Make a extensive memory check like memcheck+

>The PSU is probably the oldest component in my computer.

Here i would bet is your problem, if the ram is ok, no CAP has a bubble and your computer is dust free then it's to 80% your PSU

<comment><USER10> > no CAP has a bubble

could you please tell me what that means ? I googled "CAP bubble computer" and the results were unrelated.

<comment><USER9> They were referring to if there was any bulging on any of the capacitors on any of the components in the computer.

<comment><USER10> ah thanks I wasn't sure what CAP meant now it's all clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> heres hoping we get ASLR in this release? :)

<comment><USER3> Well they have ASR, if you want ASLR and much more you probably want to use

[https://hardenedbsd.org/content/easy-feature- comparison](https://hardenedbsd.org/content/easy-feature-comparison)</comment></comment>


Lego Mosaic Printer (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://jkbrickworks.com/lego-mosaic-printer/ <comment><USER2> The sad part about this is the fact that there are many youngsters in the comments of the page begging for instructions on how to make it, with none being revealed.

<comment><USER3> Are you sad because there are no instructions or because youngsters these days seem to feel instructions are a necessary component of Lego building?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This, combined with [https://www.beadifier.pro](https://www.beadifier.pro), would be absolutely magical.</comment>


Ask HN: Getting users  - <AUTHOR>

In the what startups are really like topic, a few people wanted pg to expand on this, so I figured it'd be a good standalone topic.<p>What was your strategy in getting the first 1,000 users? <comment><USER2> Content creation and organic SEO. If you're the guy writing things that solve problems for your users, it a) brings them into your site and b) pre-disposes them to trust you when you say that using your software/service will help them with the problem they are having. (Content ranks for long-tail terms, content draws links, links help you rank for more competitive terms, repeat ad nauseum.)

Organic SEO scales stupidly well, incidentally, and if you're a bootstrappy type of person you can turn the revenue it brings into AdWords or other paid acquisition strategies, then use the revenue that brings to improve your organic SEO, then...

It really helps if you either write very well, have a unique positioning for your blog/articles/whatever, or have some sort of unfair advantage that everybody else on the Internet can't match. In my case, the unfair advantage for the last two years has been my CMS, which lets me outpublish organizations with budgets next to which mine would be rounding error. (An old buddy of mine, ex-military, on the subject of unfair advantages: "A fair fight is the result of poor planning".)

<comment><USER3> You know, I just tried to track down your email address, gave up/came to my senses, and I'll just spit it out here. Connect the dots for me. How do you go from the content you publish on your blog (the one I know about, MicroISV) to selling teachers bingo cards?

I would _love_ for the answer for customer development for Matasano's product to be content development, but, like you, our blog is inside baseball. We're popular, and there's some overlap between our readers (security people) and our customers (firewall operators), but not as much as you'd think.

For services work, content has been a clean win (also: surveys, giving away posters). I'm not seeing how to do it with the product. I read your stuff and I always feel like there are a million things we're doing wrong.

<comment><USER2> Oh, the blog is more for me than for my customers. The content I write for my customers is metric loads of bingo cards: <http://www.bingocardcreator.com/bingo-cards> (Edit to add: Oh, I have a blog on the main site too these days. No great shakes yet.)

It is _very_ easy to go from downloading bingo cards to selling software to write them. Customers come in wanting to play e.g. American history bingo, customers realize the free set doesn't have exactly the words from their lesson, customers are told if they want to customize a few sample cards all they have to do is sign up for the free trial, ... you get the general idea.

Edit to add:

Incidentally, I know nearly nothing about firewalls or what the concerns of firewall operators are. I imagine they sound something like How Do I Set Up A Firewall Which [Insert Distinguishing Feature Here]. I further imagine that there are a wide range of distinguishing features which could be enumerated automatically or semi-automatically, for example, set up a firewall which allows $APP_NAME by opening up $APP_PORT. Have you considered writing an article or two about that general subject? How about writing an article or two thousand? (You can, of course, interdisperse it with more hand-crafted, higher level content.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Honestly, the number of your users is directly correlated to your potential market. Patrick's bingo cards are going after a much smaller market (teachers) than Drew's online storage (everyone). Colin's online storage for technically astute paranoids is probably somewhere in the middle.

So it really doesn't matter what you do if you're not targeting your market correctly. You have to be honest with yourself and figure that out first. Blogging on your blog isn't as good as being a good member of the relevant messageboard for your particular community, for example. (At least not for your first 1,000 users.)

For us, it was cold calling on the seller side and PR on the buyer side. Turns out that the tech blogs have been much more willing to write about us than the gaming blogs. I don't get that, but hey, whatever. YMMV depending on your initial vertical.

<comment><USER5> Games blogs are usually fairly focused on games themselves, not the meta stuff around selling and buying them. OK, at Joystiq et al we would often do stuff like sales charts and in-person reports from the Xbox 360 line, but readers mostly visit for entertainment value. Writing about a marketplace site would come across too much like an ad, I think; we didn't highlight Amazon or Best Buy's sale items, for example!

(Weirdly we did cover the digital distribution stuff a fair bit, but I think that's twofold. Firstly, most of it is from major gaming players and impacts the rest of their strategy, which fanboys will leap on. Secondly, digital distribution is still New and Exciting.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pre launch: Blogging about a subject related to your startup and twittering, funneled into the classic "sign up to know when we launch" holding page, along with personal networking should give you 1000 prime users ready for when you launch.

Post launch: more personal networking (esp with influentials - either in person or virtual) and getting good write ups

However, before you sign up even your first user you need to make sure you have a strong viral loop going (assuming your product is suitable for it) so that every user you obtain is likely to send you even more.

IMHO it's not actually hard to get 1000 users, it's actually harder to obtain the first 50,000 users. After that you probably are reaching the inflection point and it gets easier (assuming good viral loop).

<comment><USER7>
      funneled into the classic "sign up to know when we launch" holding page

How did you make this work for you? How long did you open it up before launching?

Edit: formatting.

<comment><USER6> You should put the "sign up to know more" box the moment you have your domain hosted.

WP Themes like <http://themeshaper.com/wordpress-domain-parking-theme/> are your friend... takes 20 minutes to set this up.

Add to the list of emails u get from this page the email address of everyone you network with about the idea/startup. That's kinda cheaky but it's done a lot.

When u launch go through the list to spot any pr, media or VIP people -- offer them a beta. Then just launch and email blast everyone with the information.

<comment><USER7> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've used mechanical turk in getting initial users. You can set up a task, and have turkers do very specific actions on your site, for $.05. And, studies have been done, that suggest that Turkers are really very well educated, and are probably early adopters. If you treat them with respect, and show appreciation for what they are doing, they will go the extra mile for you.

I've also used Adsense to get initial users. For my keywords, they cost about $.10 a user, and about half of them bounced. But, it provided me with a demographic that I wouldn't have reached with Mechanical Turk.

<comment><USER9> Wow, not sure how I didn't even know that this existed! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Search marketing.

This avenue may not fit your startup because no one may be searching your industry. I mean, if your startup is Twitter, you're not going to get very far bidding on the keyword "microblogging".

It worked with our startup because people were already finding our competitors using search (our competitors literally created the search market for us because of their large scale media buys offline), and the volume allows us to scale.

</comment><comment><USER11> Bribery.

Every product launch I've been a part of has basically used some form of bribery to get users. Of course, my background is all enterprise software. We have either shown people how they are losing money by not using our product or how they will miss out on making money by not using our product. Maybe bribery is the wrong word. What's the word for bribing people with their own money?

I haven't had any "viral" products yet, so I'd personally like to hear about how that works for people :D

<comment><USER12> Proving ROI?

Pretty much what Greg Mcadoo(sp?) from Seqouia said yesterday I think.

No idea why you' consider this bribery, lol. You're either saving money or helping them make more. Bribery is a (usually criminal) way of giving something for a favor.

<comment><USER11> Evidently I've done a poor job of making a joke :D

My point was just that we've found that the best way to motivate people to use our products has been to illustrate that they're missing out on an opportunity by not using it. Since I do all enterprise work, the fastest way to do that is by showing them how it affects their money, not that our solution is cheap or expensive or anything like that.

<comment><USER12> Haha totally understandable. A joke like that can easily get lost. I recently joked with a potential cofounder about creating a service "100 f __*ing times more addictive than cocaine". Threw him off for a bit;) Lesson learned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Launch in private beta and email bloggers access codes. We got 18,000 users in 4 weeks like this, not sure if it's generalizable. I wrote the details down here: [http://runitback.tumblr.com/post/223371555/how-we- got-18-000...](http://runitback.tumblr.com/post/223371555/how-we- got-18-000-beta-users-in-4-weeks)

</comment><comment><USER14> The way we got our first users for Woobius was that some of the initial team were architects, and we had strong links with a number of architecture firms. So when the product was barely useable, we deployed it and got them to start trying it out. There followed a frantic search for a decent host when we realised that those people were using Woobius for real live projects and they'd get rather annoyed if it suddenly vanished in a hard drive crash or the like.

Anyway, to cut a long story, since Woobius is a naturally viral tool (see [http://danieltenner.com/posts/0009-how-to-make-your- applicat...](http://danieltenner.com/posts/0009-how-to-make-your-application- viral.html) ), it spread from that initial kernel, with effectively no marketing.

If you don't have strong connections to potential users of your product, I would advise building a different product.

<comment><USER15> From swombat's article:

 _One way to resolve this problem is to ask yourself what would happen if someone who just joined my application thought it's great and wanted to invite 20 of their friends/colleagues? If you can't provide an easy way for that person to market your application for you, you'll lose out on your best inviters._

As a user, it really annoys me when inviting others is a hassle. Ideally the process should be almost effortless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Link from my other sites.

I might be up for sending some HN people their first users if you are getting desparate (see my profile for contact info), but I doubt my audience of MySpacers really matches with anything that anyone here is doing.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you are making money from get go, paid search is not bad if you can get to a positive ROI after a little bit of messing around.

Your leverage with paid search will depend on your longterm earning per customer and your cost of customer acquisition among other factors. I would suggest you read Sean Ellis' blog. He talks a lot about customer acquisition: <http://startup-marketing.com/>

</comment><comment><USER17> Directories. There's almost always appropriate directories to get your thing listed on. iPhone app store is the extreme example. Maybe you can create an addon for Firefox and submit it to addons.mozilla.org. Maybe you have audio software and you can get it listed on some big audio software directory or blog.

It really depends what kind of thing you have, but there's almost always some list out there that it belongs on.

<comment><USER18> will that really get you a thousand users?

<comment><USER19> With iPhone apps - sure.

<comment><USER18> not without marketing also

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> You are probably solving a problem, right? Ask yourself how would you go about finding the solution to such problem and go there. "There" will be some blogs, community websites etc where you can add comments whenever a relevant question comes up for discussion. This worked for me.

What didn't work: approaching any kind of famous blogger (zero responce), google ads (huge money drain).

</comment><comment><USER18> our first 1000 users:

via our blog talking about what we're doing and why (= good for SEO, engagement of community)

PR though you'd be surprised at how little an effect this makes typically though, you gotta really target / be lucky. Tip: DaringFireball = iPhone app sales.

Twitter - great to engage users of competitor products (sorry) or people musing aloud wishing your product exists (it does! they just haven't found it!)

Spin off sites - I really love these. Do a simple project (= 1 days work) that'll get on the reddit home page or become a mini twitter hit. works really well for getting users, then convert them from the spin off site to your site. if you're a good product manager you can make this work wonders. this might be a widget (duckduckgo style) or a tshirt or mugs, or an actual service.

</comment><comment><USER20> Buy ads, track their performance, use multivariate testing to improve their performance.

</comment><comment><USER21> Direct mail. I'm not talking the crappy postcards or the fake credit cards everyone gets.

I'm talking about handwriting a note to someone influential. If your market is teachers, write to the department heads at a local High school. If they like it, they'll spread it to their teacher friends.

Handwriting the notes is a PAIN (it will literally hurt your hands), but it is much more effective and personal than a cookie cutter email or a mass mailing letter.

Unfortunately, this method isn't scalable, but it will give you a good start.

<comment><USER22> > Unfortunately, this method isn't scalable, but it will give you a good > start.

Perhaps, if you cheat? Let somebody else hand-write your notes. (Although you still need to create the content.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The easiest way is make your product appeal to the widest range of users possible. If half the people on an airplane could benefit from your product than your onto a good idea.

Unfortunately my product deals with a very specific market and by the time we have 1,000 "users" we'll be billionaires.

I'm still trying to figure out how to create a SaaS product that provides water or food . . . because everyone needs that.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you are really niche then adwords is probably the best way to go.

If you are mass market then get the blog mentions and organic SEO.

</comment><comment><USER25> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_action>

</comment><comment><USER26> Influencers and Media Relations. Picked industry specific niches, and leaders, invited them to participate in our early stages (at least their opinion) and began strong networking. Day of release(s) had support from these opinion leaders and they helped promote.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is of course based on the assumption you've built something people need/want.

</comment><comment><USER28> Create a widget with a link back to your site. Good for referrals and pagerank.

</comment><comment><USER29> We're trying to get bloggers. www.offyourfacelook.com

</comment><comment><USER18> techcrunch

<comment><USER30> ...though that's probably an unsuitable strategy for most products.

<comment><USER18> i was joking a little too :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is really interesting for me, because I'm working on this problem right now with my startup: CustomerFind.

Right now, CustomerFind.com is a Twitter application that automatically follows users on Twitter. You specify a set of keywords, and then automatically follow users who have a tweet mentioning one of those keywords. Presently, on average of ~15% of users will follow back, with good keywords typically generating a 30% follow back rate.

Unfortunately, there's really no way to know if those users are real customers who will use your product/pay you. So I'm working on evolving the service. How many of you would be interested in the next iteration? The idea is to create personal conversations with customers. I am considering the following features for candidacy.

1\. You get a list of users who have a tweet mentioning any one of some prespecified keywords.

1a. You have an option to auto-follow these users.

1b. You can filter the list by geography, user popularity, and emotional inflection of the message.

2\. You get a CRM tool to enable you to personally engage with users. Sachin: you noticed someone is looking for "sell videogames"? You then have an opportunity to start an @reply/DM conversation with them, within the product. This coincides with Seth Godin's philosophy of permission marketing: you get to reach out to people who _really want_ to hear what you have to say.

2a. You get automated notifications to encourage you to follow-up with more messages. Following up is critical to any good sales methodology.

2b. Each sales/conversation thread contains the user's information, and other facts mined from the tweeting history to help target the conversation.

3\. You can type in a competitor's screen name (or your own!), and figure out the most popular words or phrases that its followers are tweeting about. Helps you do better targeting for your own list. For example, you type in @TheNorthFace, and learn that people are talking about "cheap snow jackets".

Anyone interested? Note: if you object by saying "that's too many conversations to keep up with!", I'd like to note that's a problem that you _desperately_ want to have.

-Zack

<comment><USER32> I was a user of your service. and when I signed up, I started following so many spammers I had to kill the oauth hookup. I don't know what was wrong with it, but it kept auto following all the horrible horrible spammers and my follower list just filled up with really bad people. I had to manually go through my follower list and delete people. Good thing I didn't have thousands of followers or else it could have taken me days.

<comment><USER33> Maybe you could look at Followers to Following ratio of a potential spammer to detect if it is indeed a spammer?

<comment><USER32> The main issue was that zack's software would automatically make me follow someone. He could probably add some basic heuristics to prevent people from following spammers. Even basic bayesian filtering would have worked. Some of the spammer accounts have completely identical tweets. It would seem kind of stupid if I had to write the software to filter my followers... I could just not use customerfind, it seems easier that way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>