Amazon launches same day delivery for Prime customers - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=br_imp_ara-1?_encoding=UTF8&node=8729023011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=desktop-hero-A&pf_rd_r=17G0FQ73T3JJQA2N0T74&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2097006022&pf_rd_i=desktop <comment><USER2> I've noticed that Amazon has totally changed my shopping habits from 3-5 years ago. Clothes and household expendable items are almost entirely purchased on Amazon (even if I just want to try on a pair of boots). Prime Subscription or Pantry takes care of most of the rest. I don't need to drive to Costco anymore or spend time walking around Wal-Mart. I look forward to the day when my Whole Foods order can be delivered fresh to my house every week.

<comment><USER3> In the UK supermarket deliveries are well established. My family gets 2 or 3 Ocado deliveries a week (they have a Prime equivalent where you pay £11 a month to get free deliveries on orders over £40, within a one-hour time slot, usually available at about 24 hours' notice).

Add that to Amazon, and I basically now only shop in shops when size/fit or feel are crucial — clothes, shoes, etc. And I really resent this — I'm trying to figure out the brands and sizes of jeans and so on that I can just reorder online as necessary, but shops screw this up by changing their ranges all the damn time. I feel like there must be a market opportunity there ...

<comment><USER4> So many places have great return policies, so it doesn't really matter anymore. There are places that specifically encourage you to buy like 2-3 pairs of shoes for example and ship back the ones that don't fit. If you are normally a size 10.5 shoe you can happily order 10/10.5/11 and then send the 2 that don't fit back for free. [http://www.zappos.com/](http://www.zappos.com/) is a good example. free shipping both ways.

<comment><USER3> Good point, but I find there are 3 obstacles to this.

1) Many shoes (and most jeans too) don't fit me in whatever size — either the fit is more complicated than a simple scalar, and/or sometimes I'd need a size somewhere between two of the sizes offered.

2) Returns on the scale needed are thus generally a bit of a pain.

3) I suspect that the overhead of paying for lots of returns makes these services rather dear, and since I find jeans and shoes way overpriced anyway this puts me off. (This one is probably all in my head, but it's no less real for that).

What I'd really like is a service where I could identify to it some clothes/shoes that fit me really well, and it could offer me a wide range of other clothes/shoes with a very similar fit. And isn't outrageously dear. (By all means, tell me this exists!).

<comment><USER5> For me your #2 is the deal breaker. If I have to box a bunch of stuff back up and drop it off somewhere it's more hassle than shopping at a brick & mortar shoe store. There would have to be a huge price advantage to make it worthwhile.

<comment><USER6> There are so many delivery services... there should really be an inverse. "We'll pick things up for you." I bet Shyp could branch out into this, though it's clearly not their target scenario [http://www.shyp.com/](http://www.shyp.com/)

<comment> jon-wood Its already a thing, but its expensive so tends not to be offered, although Amazon will arrange pick up for a small fee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is anecdotal and not 100% related, but I had Prime for awhile for the fast shipments. When I signed up, Prime was substantially faster than the average standard ship times. When the cost of Prime went up, I cancelled because it wasn't worth it to me anymore. However, I noticed my stuff was still arriving fast. It wasn't marked as "Prime", and it wasn't guaranteed 2-day delivery, but it was much faster than I remember the average standard shipping to be.

I am wondering if the Prime shipping infrastructure is the cause of this...everything is faster now, and it would cost money to artificially slow non-Prime shipments down, so they get the ancillary benefit of Prime-ish speed.

<comment><USER8> Prime really doesn't have anything to do with 2-day delivery. They wouldn't be able to afford to ship everything by air for free.

The advantage of Prime is really that you can have everything shipped for free without worrying about minimums. Well that and all the other perks, like streaming video, photos, etc.

They now have warehouses located within 1 day ground shipping distance of everywhere in the continental US. It's not that hard, I doubt they need more than a dozen locations.

That said, and I have run into this, if your item isn't commonly ordered and is in one of the warehouses that isn't close to you ... they will adjust the delivery date and still ship it to you over Ground. I have called to complain and they said that Prime 2 Day guarantee only applies to Prime items that are geographically close to you. If it it's a Prime item and for whatever reason it has to travel pretty far to you, no 2 day delivery. I've had items arrive a week after order and they still considered that OK and quoted some legalese. Now, this happens rarely, but it does happen.

<comment><USER9> Amazon heavily talks up the two-day shipping speed of Prime:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201118070)

There's nothing in there about it being different if it's not close to you. The only exception to "two days" is the typical "it's business days, not actual days" exception, and an exception for stuff that can't be sent right away.

If they are indeed behaving as you say then it's a flat-out lie. The advantage of Prime is, as stated, that you can have everything shipped for free without worrying about minimums _and get it fast_.

<comment><USER8> From the page you linked, the very first note. Click that link. Here it is:

[http://smile.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId...](http://smile.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201118050)

The first line is very important: "Items sold by Amazon.com that are marked on the product page _and at checkout_."

Emphasis mine. As an example, I ordered a Logitech Mouse. The item was listed as Prime. It was shown in stock. It showed a guaranteed delivery date within 2 days in the item page. I simply ordered and didn't pay attention to anything else.

It showed up a week later. When I called, it was pointed out to me that the "guaranteed delivery date" that matters is NOT on the item page. It's on the checkout page and those emails they send you after you order. They were correct, the email I got said a week later ... of course, I didn't pay attention, because most things come in 2 days and the item page did say it'll come within 2 days time before I ordered.

Is that false advertising? Sure. I forgive them.

I've also ordered Prime items that were listed in stock and had a guaranteed delivery date on the item page, but then mysteriously went out of stock later and simply weren't shipped at all.

I order a lot. Maybe 2-3 items every week. This has happened only a few times. With the breadth of their operations, these hiccups are understandable. I did manage to get a few 10 dollar credits once in a while, but sometimes they just refuse to own up to it and tell you to get lost.

<comment><USER10> I think you are falling victim to an admittedly sub-par UI rather than false advertising. If they clearly indicated that an item was not 2-day eligible and you clicked through too fast to notice or somehow ended up on a non-Amazon seller, that's really not false advertising. I also order a ton, and have never had such an issue. (I have shipped items to the wrong address, however, since like you it can become a habit not to read the order checkout carefully.)

<comment><USER11> I've have the same issue as maratd where on the product page it has said:

* Prime

* "Want it $DayOfWeek, $Month $Day? Order within XX hrs XX mins and choose..."

where "$DayOfWeek, $Month $Day" is 2 days away and I've bought it and it didn't show up until 4,5,6,7 days later. Same thing with the email. It's not "sub-par UI" it's very clearly designed to make you think... no fuck that, it's not just "thinking" they TELL YOU when you will get it and even give you a countdown to "lock in". It's not even deserving of "shitty UI" if they can't honor that text they shouldn't show it. Period. You can't lie on your product page then turn around and point to emails no one reads confirming my purchase. I buy prime because I know it will get here within 2 days and if I can wait (which I normally can) then waiting is worth not having to deal with more shit traffic and going to the store. If it's not going to be here in 2 days I need that in FLASHING RED LETTERS, sometimes I will still be fine. Sometimes, like when it's medicine, I need to know it's not coming when I expect it.

I've had times I've ordered something with the text from above, it not showed up after 2 days and then Amazon telling me it won't be here for another 3-4 days when ON THEIR WEBSITE it still say's "Want it $nowPlus2Days? Order within...". That's bullshit.

All of that said I love Amazon and this inconvenience is minor compared to the value they provide. I just wish they would be a little more honest on the product page. They KNOW this is happening but are choosing to do nothing about it, that really disappoints me. I expected better from Amazon.

<comment><USER10> "I've had times I've ordered something with the text from above, it not showed up after 2 days and then Amazon telling me it won't be here for another 3-4 days when ON THEIR WEBSITE it still say's "Want it $nowPlus2Days? Order within..."."

I suppose I could be wrong here, so I apologize for doubting you, but next time that occurs double check that you bought from the same seller as the Prime seller that's listed when you go back to check. I still suspect you are getting lost in the UI. Specifically, I think you may have bought from Seller Y, which when you checked out specified was not Prime, and then when you went back to the same exact product page you saw Seller Z offering 2-day prime. I've seen lots of people get tripped up by the way Amazon displays multiple vendors selling the same product on the same page. Vendors will go back and forth competing on pricing, so often the "main" seller that's listed on a product page will continuously switch among several sellers.

<comment><USER8> > I suppose I could be wrong here, so I apologize for doubting you, but next > time that occurs double check that you bought from the same seller as the > Prime seller that's listed when you go back to check.

When I had this happen to me, the orders were NOT from a 3rd party seller. They were directly from Amazon proper. This is not a UI issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As longtime Prime member and a resident of a metro area that doesn't make the cut (and is almost certainly not in the next round), I can't help feeling like I'm subsidizing this service for those who live in the right place.

In fact, every time Amazon adds a new benefit for Prime members that I can't use or don't want, it reminds me that I must be overpaying for Prime if I'm only using the two day shipping.

<comment><USER13> Despite being a Prime member for years the only thing I've used it for is the two-day shipping but I don't mind the existence of the other perks because just in real dollar terms Prime still saves me a boatload of money versus shipping costs I'd have to pay for similar quick (and in a way more importantly: consistently arriving on the correct day) shipping when buying on other sites.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm in San Diego so this new thing does actually benefit me... and I'm pretty excited about it. Sorry.

<comment><USER12> > in real dollar terms Prime still saves me a boatload of money

Me too, which is why I keep it. But I do wish they'd offer a Prime Lite with just the shipping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What kind of infrastructure does it take to be able to offer this kind of service in the chosen metropolitan areas? Do they have warehouses and delivery trucks located nearby that are ready to go at a moment's notice?

In any case, this is super cool of Amazon, they are really stepping up their game.

<comment><USER15> I think this is basically the case. Here in indianapolis there is a local Amazon warehouse and I got notification that this service is now available. I think they've been working on this for a while w/ various strategies.

For example: I order diapers via Subscribe-and-Save. Sometimes the diapers come in the standard amazon boxes from UPS/Fedex/USPS. Sometimes a guy in an unmarked pick-up truck filled with diaper boxes drops off the diapers(with an amazon shipping label adhered directly to the pampers box).

<comment><USER16> How does the subscribe-and-save work as your child grows and goes up diaper sizes?

<comment><USER15> You just cancel the subscription and start a new one on the larger size.

<comment><USER17> You don't have to cancel the subscription, they have an option for many items to just change the size.

<comment><USER15> Could be. I haven't done it in a while. Diapers are weird though, some kinds only go up to size 2, then you have to switch to a different kind and its not really just changing sizes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=br_imp_ara-1?_encoding=UTF8&node...](http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=br_imp_ara-1?_encoding=UTF8&node=8729023011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=desktop- hero-A&pf_rd_r=17G0FQ73T3JJQA2N0T74&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=2097006022&pf_rd_i=desktop)

That's a horrible url. Why not use something like [http://amazon.com/news/free-prime-same-day- delivery](http://amazon.com/news/free-prime-same-day-delivery)? Is there some significant advantage to identifying the page with non-human readable identifiers in the query string that I'm not aware of?

Otherwise, very cool. I just wish it was in more areas.

<comment><USER19> [http://www.amazon.com/sameday](http://www.amazon.com/sameday)

<comment><USER18> Interesting that they have a pretty url already generated for the page and then redirect to something that's completely unreadable. It seems like you'd want to have a single, readable url to have people sharing with others, if they copy and paste the url from their browser.

<comment><USER20> Why do that when they can create a unique URL And data mine who you share the link with or where you post it? People call it "dark social" where there are no referrers such as IM, Text, or chat services like Slack, Hipchat, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a love hate relationship with amazon and this is just making it worse.

As a customer, this is amazing service. Sometimes I pay a bit more at amazon just for speedy delivery (it is a trade off you need to balance). And for a lot of things the selection is amazing.

As someone who runs a small business that has to ship products, amazon continues to raise the bar to a level/place that we just cannot meet. Our timelines for delivery and shipping costs are "out in front" and I can assure you that in setting that expectation we are deterring some customers from purchasing.

To that end, we are investing in tools to be more high touch and high engagement, our margins are such that we are able to do that but a lot of other small player simply do not have that ability.

<comment><USER22> If what you're shipping to customers meets certain criteria, you could use Fulfillment By Amazon to have them do the shipping and logistics for you.

There's costs involved, but maybe it comes out as an overall win for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The news here seems to be that same day delivery is now free in certain metros, for prime members.

Amazon has offered same day delivery for a while, they just charged extra for it.

<comment><USER24> Where _free_ means: _Orders under $35 are just $5.99 per order for Prime members._

<comment><USER25> Where free _actually_ means: Prime members in selected areas now receive FREE Same-Day Delivery on qualifying orders over $35.

<comment><USER26> I'm always surprised at people's ability to spin positive things in negative light.

<comment><USER27> The reverse is true too. Prime shipping is never actually free, you're paying $99/year for it.

<comment><USER28> A more honest word is 'complimentary'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Anyone know if this uses Amazon-owned delivery trucks or a traditional package delivery company?

<comment><USER30> They use their own vans.

edit: They basically leverage their amazon fresh / amazon now deliveries.

<comment><USER31> Not always. My same day stuff came with OnTrac.

<comment><USER32> That's a story I'd love to read about. OnTrac seems to use basically junker cheaply painted white mid-90s minivans whenever I see them about. They simply slap a magnet with OnTrac on it and it becomes a fleet vehicle.

While FedEx/UPS have their own custom designed fleet, OnTrac seems to scour auto auctions for theirs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't know if I'm just unlucky, but I'm in NYC and I rarely get my "free Prime next day deliveries!" the next day (but I am racking up a pile of "$1 off ebooks" vouchers because of it).

<comment><USER34> Those vouchers have a fairly short (3 months?) expiry date.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Does anyone have insights/guesses into the reasons behind the cities where this has been rolled out? It doesn't seem to correlate with market size. Is it:

\- regulation

\- supply lines

\- weather

\- internal politics

??

<comment><USER36> What would make you say that? These are all large, urban places which are known to utilize Amazon.

Indianapolis is the only city that's confusing to me, but they have a warehouse there, and it is located close enough to ship to other locations within the 1 day timeframe.

<comment><USER35> No Chicago, Houston, Minneapolis, and Kansas City. Upper Midwest is conspicuously absent.

<comment><USER36> Fair point. Seems to be Amazon strategy though, after looking at their distribution center map: [https://scmmsublogs.wordpress.com/scm- strategies/amazon-com-...](https://scmmsublogs.wordpress.com/scm- strategies/amazon-com-inc/) Wouldn't be surprised to see Chicago added to the list of supported cities soon, but Houston, Minneapolis, and Kansas City are all pretty far from current/planned distribution centers.

<comment><USER37> Amazon is opening warehouses on Goose Island in Chicago and in Joliet in the near future: [http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-amazon-goose- islan...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-amazon-goose- island-0430-biz-20150429-story.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> when I saw the page I pressed refresh thinking the css was broken. Then I realised thats how its supposed to look.

</comment><comment><USER39> Meanwhile, the DVD I attempted to order this morning using Prime's two-day- shipping delivery date was estimated to be Tuesday (five days away).

I get delivery issues, but the item was advertised by being sold by Amazon using Prime.

<comment><USER40> Did it actually take five days? I find their shipping estimates are often very pessimistic.

<comment><USER41> Same here.

I'd say about 1 in 3 packages I order end up being delivered a day earlier than they quoted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> In LA, Amazon same day delivery didn't deliver on the same day in 2 of 3 orders. The order that was delivered same day came at 10pm, much too late.

Of course, I only ordered same day delivery because I actually needed the item that day. I was trying to save a car trip (an especially valuable feature in LA), but had to go out and buy the items anyway.

The people who deliver same day seem to be freelancers, who don't seem to have any delivery tracking technology.

I can't see choosing this option again. Ordering for next day delivery almost always meets the delivery commitment.

<comment><USER43> Same day delivery has always worked for me (4 of 4), but they do come late, always after 9pm, and it's always a private vehicle (white Chevy Astrovan). I live in Woodland Hills, if that makes a difference. The closest warehouse Amazon has is in San Bernardino, but 2 of my packages had tags that said Burbank, so they must have a smaller distribution center there.

I have noticed that if you add an item to your wish list and later buy it, with prime it will arrive the next day, not 2-3 days. I think Amazon ships items in your wish list to a warehouse close to you if they are not there already, but I can't prove my theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Interesting choice launching in Dallas but not Austin or Houston for Texas.

<comment><USER45> I have a cousin who lives in Austin and he says he's ordered a Mountain Dew from Amazon and had it delivered two hours later by someone in a hatchback. This was about two months ago. YMMV.

<comment><USER46> Yes, the service is called PrimeNow and it does 2-hour delivery for items commonly found in supermarkets and stores around your area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> When amazon was pressured into charging sales taxes in many states, I predicted that it would likely translate to same day delivery. They used it as an opportunity to bring the product closer to their customers. I know i'll be using amazon even more now.

</comment><comment><USER48> Amazon's Prime 2-day delivery completely changed my ability to wait for gratification. For deliveries that take the normal 5 days, I'm finding myself checking Delivery app a couple of times every day, hoping that something is wrong with the details and I'll actually receive my box sooner.

A couple of examples:

1\. I have bought a couple of things from Massdrop and because these were estimated to arrive in about 2 weeks, I was initially very annoyed and then totally forgot about them

2\. I have chosen a product based on how soon it'll be delivered (I didn't actually need it urgently) instead of just considering the product qualities.

</comment><comment><USER49> Link without tracking data: [http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=8729023011](http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=8729023011)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is why Amazon gave in on state sales taxes. In order to pull this off they needed to expand their distribution network, which meant having a "presence" which would have put them on the hook for taxes anyway.

I'm curious to see if they'll pull it off. There's a lot of wreckage from previous attempts that failed.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm surprised (and disappointed) Reno isn't included, seeing as there's a major Amazon distribution center just on the outskirts (in the same area where Tesla's building their Gigafactory). That should be _really_ easy to pull off.

</comment><comment><USER51> Just checked and it seems that this is not available for Locker delivery. I wonder why.

<comment><USER30> They can't guarantee you will get it the "next day" since the store owner is the one who puts the packages into the locker themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Requires a $35 minimum purchase

<comment><USER53> So do the vast majority of other Prime shipments, the occasional <$35 item/order may quality for free 2day shipping depending on some undefined circumstances

Edit: Whoops, I was thinking non-prime 2day shipping

<comment><USER54> Huh? Sorry, but that's just wrong. They do have add-on items which have to be bought at the same time as other items to get the free shipping. But I assure you that I routinely get free Prime shipping for single items that are well under $35. It's the norm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> same day is ridiculous. what's next? are they going to have convenience stores disguised as trucks roaming the neighbourhood waiting for me to realize halfway through making tacos that I have no sour cream?

</comment><comment><USER56> Would Amazon have done this years ago if it wasn't so bent on avoiding sales tax (and thus locating warehouses far from buyers)? Did potential Amazon competitors miss out on this opportunity?

</comment><comment><USER57> I had feeling this was going to happen. While I don't live in one of the metro areas on the map, I recently had an order that I received the next day, although I chose 2-day shipping.

<comment><USER58> Recently, I've had that happen frequently—probably 50% of the time. Makes it difficult to time orders when I'm trying to receive something covertly on a day when I'm working from home (and my wife is not). I've ended up paying for overnight shipping just to ensure that I have the timing right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> It would be really nice if this type of information was listed in their API. I still don't know why when you look up an item it doesn't say whether its same day delivery or not.

</comment><comment><USER60> Has anyone actually found a thing that is for sale on the same day? I live in SF and for any search the "Get it today" is grayed out (and has been since 8 am).

<comment><USER61> Yesterday I had the option of buying an SSD same-day. I'm in Philadelphia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> As a Amazon.com customer since the late nineties I don't get the "Prime" subscription model. I have a e-ink Kindle, I buy MP3s, electronics, many books there on their Market Place and I use AWS.

But why should I care about "Prime"? Either Amazon cares about long term customers or not, but don't try to force me to Prime by showing full screen "Prime" advertisement (with a little "no thanks" link) at every purchase. I don't need same-day delivery, but I don't want worse delivery times than before Prime has been introduced (which happened).

<comment><USER45> I wonder what the cause of your slower shipping was. Another poster said he doesn't have Prime but his shipping speed is still Prime fast.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9619203](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9619203)

<comment><USER62> I suspect it was the introduction of Prime as all my shipments take at least a day longer than before. (in western Europe) It took 1-2 days, now it takes usually 2-7 days. I also found no correlation to the reoccurring strike problems at Amazon warehouses in Germany.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Is there a way to restrict my search to eligible items?

<comment><USER64> Yes. Filter by PRIME | Free Same Day [0]

[0] [http://g-ecx.images- amazon.com/images/G/01/prime/sameday/VXD...](http://g-ecx.images- amazon.com/images/G/01/prime/sameday/VXD-180-SameDayLaunch-landing- infoSteps-900x250._V304312315_.png)

<comment><USER63> Ugh. This is super annoying. You can only see this filter and the eligability if your default address is in the region. I live in a valid area, but often have things sent to work which is just outside the valid area.

I wish I could see the fast shipping option, and just know I have to send it home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Now if only Australia could get same-month delivery.

</comment><comment><USER66> I dunno. I just ordered $100 in stuff and it's set to deliver "Saturday by 8pm" (2.5 days from now)

</comment><comment><USER67> Why does this post have so many upvotes and comments?

</comment><comment><USER68> I wonder how are they going to improve from there. Previous day delivery? "We deliver before you buy" (tm)

<comment><USER69> T "We thought you may be running low on toilet paper, so we sent some for free. If you're not, then just tick no and we'll take it back, or [from a comment that was deleted shortly after it was posted] pass it to an Amazon neighbor for a $2 credit."

T+1 "We've noticed you appreciate our pre-emptive notifications, and hope we've been helping you out. We'd like to opt you in to our pre-emptive ordering system, so we can help you forget those small essentials. We've included some complementary, ripe, seedless avocados less than 1 day from the tree they were picked from as a sample of the power this feature can offer; this freshness can't be bought in shops."

T+2 "We've opted you in to our pre-emptive ordering system, where we will send you those daily essentials and special seasonal must-haves. There is no commitment. If we ever send you some thing you don't feel you need, we'll happily take it back at no charge and no effort from you."

There is definitely a business model there.

<comment><USER70> The first option there is the same scam that record clubs used. In the UK, at least, any goods sent to you speculatively are yours to keep for free; any attempt to collect payment is illegal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> No Denver.. lame.

<comment><USER72> Only if you live in Denver.</comment></comment>


Come to Flourish 2011 an open-source conference in Chicago hosted by UIC - <AUTHOR> http://www.flourishconf.com/2011/

<comment><AUTHOR> Some of the speakers at the conference are \- Ryan "Icculus" Gordon - <USER2> talk about Gaming on Linux

\- Italo Vignoli - Founder & Steering Committee member of The Document Foundation (LibreOffice)

\- Chris Palmer - From the Electronic Fronter Foundation

\- Mitch Altman - A famous open source hardware hacker and creator of the TV- B-Gone.

\- Chris McAvoy - VP of technology at Threadless and founder of the Chicago Python Users Group

\- Gregory Miller - From Open Source Digital Voting

</comment><comment><USER3> This should be the best Flourish evers!</comment>


Secretive face-matching startup has customer list stolen - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/clearviews-list-of-law-enforcement-clients-lost-in-data-breach/ <comment><AUTHOR> _" Unfortunately, data breaches are part of life in the 21st century," Tor Ekeland, an attorney for Clearview, told The Daily Beast._</comment>


Tesla Takes Short Seller to Court, Saying He Menaced Its Workers - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-21/tesla-takes-short-seller-to-court-saying-he-menaced-its-workers <comment><USER2> TSLAQ started a legal defense fund for him on gofundme and raised their $20,000 goal in less than an hour. $54,000 so far from 215 people.

[https://www.gofundme.com/skabooshka-defense- fund](https://www.gofundme.com/skabooshka-defense-fund)</comment>


Ask HN: How to hack relationships if you're gay? - <AUTHOR>

My story: I'm in my late 20's, I have great friends/roommates but none of them really know anyone else. We moved to a new city four years ago and haven't really made any new connections. None of my friends are gay, nor do they know any gay people. I work a lot (startup life, yo).
I've never been in a relationship.
I've tried online dating, I've tried going to events where people with similar interests would be. I've even gone to furry events (for the record: ~30% of furries are gay and ~40% are bisexual; also, I like fursuits).
I've yet to even make a friend, let alone meet anyone whom I could enter a relationship with.
I don't know what I'm doing wrong. It's like nobody is interested in me. I wonder if I'm too boring.
Has anyone else found themselves in this situation?
How did you get out of it? <comment><USER2> Work on cultivating your interest in other people - literally make an effort to figure people out, what makes them tick, how they became who they are or did something they find interesting. You'll have to make an effort to start small talk conversations but don't put pressure on yourself for them to blossom into friendships, that's something that happens but itself later on - and I'm sure it will happen. People like a good listener! I find fursuits a bit baffling, but certainly not boring, so don't be so hard on yourself.

It's good to have a solid job but it's good to maintain a vibrant outside life too - if you're working so much that you don't have time to make friends then you need to tweak your work-life balance a bit, not least because it might be gradually lowering your productivity.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually work two jobs right now. One's a day job with a two hour commute (each way), and I'm trying to help one of my friends start a business too. Only the first one pays.

I do need to spend more time on myself, but there are too many demands for my time right now :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It sounds like you want a relationship and you're not doing anything about it that works to get one.

There's currently no technology that lessens the fundamental barrier to meeting new people: fear. Online dating, singles events, subculture meetups -- if you see them as a guarantee of some people meeting you, they're snake oil. If you see them as what they are, just opportunities for you to overcome your fear of meeting new people, they'll bear (...) fruit.

Maybe you consider yourself quite outgoing and "not afraid" of talking to people. Well, the fear that stops you meeting new people who you end up with will get you in other ways: fear of intimacy, fear of believing someone likes you.

I bet, after you get into a relationship and you reflect on all the times you hung out with other people, you'll gradually realise there were plenty that liked you, and you just didn't see it, or act on it, at that time.

Whenever I break up, and I want someone new, I get out there and talk to people. A lot of people. Start conversation. This trains you into a certain energy level of relating to strangers, which then carries over into your interactions that are going to matter. The barrier of starting a conversation with people will seem less, because you'll be used to it more.

Also, you might be in a city which doesn't work to be gay. Some cities are more anti gay, go to one more permeable.

If you really don't want to take any effort, and you just want someone else to do all the work, then at least you have to give them an opportunity: get out there and do something where you meet a lot of people. Some of them will try to get close to you.

At the end of the day tho, the thing which works best is to be yourself. So maybe that work on yourself you've been delaying, might be time to get to it. The reason is because when you're yourself the people you meet and connect with are right for you, and also what you offer them is truly you. So if you don't even really know who that is supposed to be at this point, work that out. So maybe get the relationship with yourself first.

<comment><AUTHOR> > It sounds like you want a relationship and you're not doing anything about > it that works to get one.

Yeah, but since I have no experience (and no one to talk to -- parents don't know I'm gay, for example), I don't know what works.

> I bet, after you get into a relationship and you reflect on all the times > you hung out with other people, you'll gradually realise there were plenty > that liked you, and you just didn't see it, or act on it, at that time.

I very rarely meet anyone who's openly gay; when I do, they're taken.

Also, it should probably be worth mentioning, I'm not very attractive. I like to think I have a good personality, but I don't naturally attract peoples' interest.

<comment><USER3> We know that you don't know what works, that's why you're asking. It's ok for you not to know, and it's ok for me to point out your not knowing is the reason you're not where you want to be, as opposed to pretending there's something inherently wrong with you. The thing in your way is that you don't know, not that you're inherently wrong, and you can improve what you don't know. Correct, you don't know because you don't have experience, and it's not a chicken and egg problem because experience is not "successful experience" experience is trying, and you can hack that by your willingness to try.

People who have a lot of experience, tried a lot of times. Gradually they get more effective, yet it's like training neural networks, everything works better with a LOT of data.

So get out there and get experience. Try, try talking, try asking people out, try being at ease, and you will learn what works for you.

I'm still learning. One hack I used when I was nervous to talk to someone was, I knew what I wanted to say and just too scared to say it, so I'd count to three in my head an force myself to say it. Literally like jumping into water, just force the air out my lungs and mouth to work. Once you're over that first utterance, it's easier. And the more times you practise that, the less hard it is to do. And even better, the more times you listen to your feelings about what you want to say, the more those feelings give you cool stuff to say, and the more clearly you know them.

So there's plenty you can do, the important thing is just to start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When it comes to gay relationships, find some friends first. You need an in to the community, someone to invite you to the happy hour with their LGBT volunteer group or the queer short film festival. All you need is one or two people who are socially connected and get you started with gay events. You meet their friends, you go to the gay parties with them, you get familiar with the scene, and one thing leads to another from there. The odds are too slim in the world outside of gay centric events. You need to actively cultivate a gay community around you, because the tech life doesn't automatically lead to one on its own. This is doubly true if your outward presentation doesn't come off as 'gay' to other people. Making yourself visible to other gay people, even in subtle ways, makes a big difference. Take it from a straight-as-hell looking bi woman. I live in the city with the highest number of lesbian couples per capita, and I met no gay women for six months. Then, I went to one gay happy hour and met someone who told me about this lesbian tech conference, where I met a few more people, and now I hang out with gay people multiple times a week, and I have my first date since moving last year lined up for this weekend.

Search for gay events on facebook. Go gay hiking with a group from Meetup. Is there a StartOut chapter in your area? There is very probably a gay tech happy hour somewhere. Go to gay events until you feel like you're going to start barfing rainbows. Force yourself to do it. Look for gay networking on LinkedIn. Add a few people on Facebook (and check out their event feed, often there is gold in there). Make plans with two new potential friends. Once it starts going, it's easy to keep going.

</comment><comment><USER5> Do you read Dan Savage? [http://www.thestranger.com/columns/savage- love](http://www.thestranger.com/columns/savage-love)

Your new city probably has a gay counseling phone line. If it doesn't, you need to move somewhere that does. You're the reason volunteers spend their time on those phones, so call them. They're gay, and they know where gay people hang out in your part of the world.

> Has anyone else found themselves in this situation? How did you get out of > it?

By joining the university choral society, persistence, and a fair bit of luck. You'll probably do it differently.

> None of my friends are gay, nor do they know any gay people.

Let's do some probability theory. Trait X is randomly distributed across 10% of the population. (You can cut the Kinsey scale at different places. It's a round number, and it's true for some plausible definition of "gay".) The likelihood of your assertion is around P=0.9^(N²), where N is the typical number of friends you or one of your friends has. Go run hoc.

Case 1: P is above, say, 5%. This is the easy case. You could be right, and you just need to get out more. Stop reading HN and do it.

Case 2: P strains credibility. You might have to replace "are" with "say that they are". This is the hard case, because meeting more people who say that they're not gay won't help, and you need some different friends. A few things to consider at that point:

Things like online dating, and events where 30% of people are gay, make it sound like you're still at least partly in the closet. If you fix that, you can start going to pubs and parties where 99% of people are gay, and they're 99% sure that you are. That makes everything much easier. For one thing, closeted guys in their late 20s aren't boyfriend material.

Coming out is like standing on a diving board: make sure there's something safe to land on, take a deep breath, then take a step where you can't step back. The feelings of exhilaration, existential choice, and not standing on anything solid, are pretty similar in both cases.

People tend not to be out at work. Therefore pretty well all sane gay men have a significant life apart from work. That has some negative career implications, but it also has some positive ones.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> > For one thing, closeted guys in their late 20s aren't boyfriend material.

I also don't live with or have anything to do with my parents. I just meant to say that I don't know anyone personally who can help me figure out why I'm so bad at this.

<comment><USER5> Hmm ... that sounds a bit grim. Tell me the city and I'll look up the phone number. That's not identifying information: there are lots of gay men everywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> Orlando, FL.

<comment><USER5> This looks like a place to start: [http://www.glbcc.org/index.html](http://www.glbcc.org/index.html) . Call them, or just walk in, and chat to the receptionist.

Think of it as like the moment when Harry Potter walks into Diagon Alley. Though it's almost certainly the other way round:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_book_club/features/19...](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_book_club/features/1999/the_harry_potter_series/harry_in_the_new_world.html)

And remember, at the start of the story, being Harry Potter was pretty terrible. That changed fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll give them a shot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I fear we have the same fears.

I am also gay, also without many gay friends (few that I hang out with frequently), same startup life, same late 20s, never been in a relationship story.

I am deeply uncomfortable with who I am. I have not found an answer yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah 3:

Being gay is kind of terrible. Especially if you want a committed monogamous relationship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am wondering in the same thing, except I am working on Wall Street where it is less tolerate. I know there must be some gays in this industry, but it seems most of gay finance professionals are closeted, and you can't really tell who is gay and who is not.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hack your fursona by adding a cool cybernetic eye or a carbon-fiber horn. Really amp up your fursona game. See you at FC!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahaha :3

I don't think I'll make it to FC this or next year. Maybe Megaplex in Kissimmee.

My FA is InfoSecFurry if you or anyone wants to bark my way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm single, gay, in Chicago, just hit my thirties, one very good relationship, a few shorter / smaller ones. I'm not great at dating, and I'm in a field that isn't exactly drenched in outgoing gay guys (academic computer science), but here are somethings that have been working well for me:

* Cooking. Not only is it a practical thing you can offer in a relationship, but its also a great way to meet someone. Invite three friends over for dinner, tell them to each bring a someone you don't know. Everyone meets a bunch of new people that likely aren't creeps (since they're at least a friend's friend), you can share something you're learning with them, and even if no one there is gay, they might know someone else who is.

* Join a club. Volunteering is a great thing for this, and volunteering in something you care about. In Chicago (where I live) we have a gay community center called the Center on Halsted. They know that lots of the people volunteering are doing so to meet friends / romantic partners / etc. So there are lots and lots of volunteer opportunities for lots of interests (safe sex promotion, working with the elderly, working with gay homeless youth, etc.)

* Work less. On one hand I know where you're coming from when you say there are too many demands on your time. But on the other hand, what you're also saying is that "all the demands on your time you're accepting are more important than your romantic life." Straight up refuse to work two nights a week and join a gay running club, find a meet up or two that you're sincerely interested in and can become a regular at, etc.

* Get more comfortable saying no. This was the hardest thing for me. I was crazy lonely for a long time, and so whenever I went on a date, I felt like saying "thanks, but I don't feel a connection" was tantamount to saying "thanks, but I'd rather be alone forever." And since I felt I couldn't say no to someone once I started dating them, I didn't say yes to anyone either (since one date felt like it "implied" 100). Surprisingly, feeling less anxious, feeling more comfortable saying no, made it a whole lot easier to say "yes" and try out lots of new possible relationships.

* Therapy? This has been huge for me, not for any particular trauma or issue, but just in a million small ways. I just saw below you saying something like "being gay sucks, especially if you want a monogamous relationship". I'm of course (totally possibly wrongly) reading myself into your comment, so take this with a mega grain of salt, but that sounds like the result of some inner struggle / insecurity stuff, maybe around sexuality. I had that attitude for a long time at least, and thats were it was coming from for me.

Anyway, shit, just wrote a book by accident. Shoot me a message if you wanna talk more man. Guess reading your comment reminded me of myself a lot…

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I was commenting on the only gay people I've met. They just want a fuck-buddy and I don't want to lower myself to that.</comment></comment>


Show HN: My New Group Messaging Startup - SMS and MMS for Any Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.sidaza.com

<comment><USER2> Amazing website using it more and more everyday!</comment>


Mesosphere and Microsoft Bring Mesos to Windows Server - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/20/mesosphere-partners-with-microsoft-to-bring-mesos-to-windows-server/

<comment><USER2> Apache Mesos could support Windows Container.

<comment><USER3> It's going to. That's what the article is about :-).</comment></comment>


A Conversation with an iTunes Card Scammer - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@brothke/a-conversation-with-an-itunes-card-scammer-6fc8ca8f9e83 <comment><USER2> If you enjoyed that, make sure to check out [https://www.youtube.com/c/KitbogaShow](https://www.youtube.com/c/KitbogaShow) where the guy wastes scammers' time in creative ways. Including wearing drag so he can video chat with them.

<comment><USER3> IRLRosie is another one:

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_0osV_nf2b0sIbm4Wiw4RQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_0osV_nf2b0sIbm4Wiw4RQ)

Does wacky voices (she's a voice actor) and sometimes she livestreams the calls to scammers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can't read it because I've apparently reached number of articles I can read this month. F*ck medium</comment>


Download 3D Files from British Museum, HTC, Microsoft - <AUTHOR> https://sketchfab.com/download

<comment><USER2> This submission has been vote manipulated, with the OP asking for upvotes on Twitter: [https://twitter.com/albn/status/527816635621838849](https://twitter.com/albn/status/527816635621838849)

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the next feature?? Are you going to become a marketplace with the download button?</comment>


What impact has Coronavirus had on your business? - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSevj2Glr1JhnjJK9c7l4bP7yyF4gtJtg_Wu87vteuofUYhB2w/viewform?usp=sf_link <comment><AUTHOR> Amidst the current Coronavirus crisis, my team and I are developing a simple website where business owners and CEOs share what impact Coronavirus is having on their organization. So far we've secured responses from 72 business and nonprofit leaders. Once we have a few more we will go live with a website, and share these stories with the community at large.

Our goal is to create a resource for how small and medium size business and nonprofit leaders are adapting their organization's as a result of Coronavirus. If you have any questions or thoughts on how we can make this most valuable, please let me know.</comment>


Prosthetic memory system successful in humans - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180327194350.htm <comment><USER2> This is neat to hear about. I've had episodic and reference memory issues since my youth so it'll be nice if that's actually a thing that'll benefit others in the same shoes. I can tell you quite assuredly that it sucks.</comment>


OfferUp is taking on Craigslist - <AUTHOR> http://betakit.com/2012/07/14/startups-rival-craigslist-for-online-classifieds-market-share

<comment><USER2> I find it a little disconcerting that the two primary things CL makes money from, housing and jobs, don't (obviously) fit for OfferUp, Grabio or HipSwap. Plus it looks like OfferUp only does posting from iOS for now. CL notwithstanding, seems like a lack of ubiquity is a show-stopper for adoption.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd have to disagree. I think capturing iPhone-iphone sales could be huge. Of course, to do that, they need to enable payment.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I may be overly excited about this startup, but I hope they do well. Craigslist is long-due for reinvention and "snap, post, pay" model is exactly the way to do it.

Of course, distribution and user-adoption are going to be really hard problems for this company to overcome.</comment>


Massive: The asm.js Benchmark - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/11/massive-the-asm-js-benchmark/ <comment><USER2> I prefer asm.js over NaCl, especially when NaCl has been available for years, and Google still supports the ARM architecture poorly, and as a second class citizen in NaCl.

It's unacceptable that a "browser-os" that should have no problem being architecture agnostic, _still_ gives Intel an edge with ChromeOS, because not all NaCl apps work on ARM Chromebooks. Seriously, how _crazy_ is that?

I can understand ARM not having a serious chance on Windows laptops because of all the legacy x86 programs, but at worst it should be equal with x86 running an OS such as Chrome OS.

<comment><USER3> I agree. asm.js has several strengths over NaCl and even PNaCl:

* It is just JavaScript, so any browser can execute asm.js code, but it can be AOT compiled by some browsers for extra performance - This means _every_ browser supports asm.js, and supports it today

* It doesn't require a new runtime or API, merely using the existing web APIs

* It is simple for other browser vendors to implement, and isn't reliant on a single implementation

* It can interface with existing JavaScript code, so it can use JS libraries and, similarly, JS code can use asm.js libraries

* It is a completely open standard

* It is architecture-independent (so's PNaCl, though)

<comment><USER4> > It is just JavaScript, so any browser can execute asm.js code, but it can be > AOT compiled by some browsers for extra performance - This means every > browser supports asm.js, and supports it today

I feel this point is slowly becoming disingenuous. If someone goes through the trouble of compiling their application to asm.js, they obviously really care about performance, because "normal" javascript wasn't good enough for them. Hell, elm/cljs/scala.js/js_of_ocaml/etc wasn't good enough. How many asm.js developers do you know that will go through the trouble of compiling a codebase to asm.js, without putting up an alert('This app works best on Firefox');?

Unless the barriers to entry for compiling to asm.js can be _very significantly_ reduced, it _will become_ a Mozilla-only ecosystem.

I'm a huge Mozilla fanboy, but I feel like they bit off more than they could chew here, and I think the effort would be better spent on standardizing a spec for a true VM instead of trying to back-compat-hack one into javascript.

<comment><USER3> > I feel this point is slowly becoming disingenuous. If someone goes through > the trouble of compiling their application to asm.js, they obviously really > care about performance, because "normal" javascript wasn't good enough for > them.

...what? asm.js is a compiler target for C code. It's not intended to be hand- written. It's also the _default_ compiler target for C code on the web. You wouldn't really want to compile to anything else, except NaCl I suppose (though that requires more porting effort).

I don't get what you mean by "going through the trouble of compiling their application to asm.js" versus ""normal" javascript wasn't good enough for them.". Why would they compile to normal JS? There's no reason to: Their codebase is in C, C++, or some other native code language. If they compile to asm.js, they get a free performance boost. If they compile to JS, they just get horrible slowness. The only difference between them, here, is a single compiler flag. I don't understand.

> Hell, elm/cljs/scala.js/js_of_ocaml/etc wasn't good enough. How many asm.js > developers do you know that will go through the trouble of compiling a > codebase to asm.js, without putting up an alert('This app works best on > Firefox');?

Why would normal JS developers be writing in asm.js? Do you even understand why asm.js exists?

> Unless the barriers to entry for compiling to asm.js can be very > significantly reduced, it will become a Mozilla-only ecosystem.

What barriers to entry? You download the emscripten SDK and you compile your existing C/C++ app to asm.js.

> I'm a huge Mozilla fanboy, but I feel like they bit off more than they could > chew here, and I think the effort would be better spent on standardizing a > spec for a true VM instead of trying to back-compat-hack one into > javascript.

It's not a VM, there's no JIT involved.

<comment><USER4> If Opera/Dolphin/Safari/whatever don't ever implement optimizations for asm.js, its not really cross-platform anymore. Sure, theoretically they can execute the code, but the performance will be so far from the expectations of the developer that they will just end up telling the user to switch to Firefox (maybe Chrome if they can ever catch up).

> Why would normal JS developers be writing in asm.js? Do you even understand > why asm.js exists?

Normal JS developers would use asm.js if they needed extra performance. I occasionally need extra performance out of javascript, so I use heavily optimized clojurescript, which helps for some applications. If I had exhausted those options, I would try programming in C and compiling to asm.js.

> What barriers to entry? You download the emscripten SDK and you compile your > existing C/C++ app to asm.js.

Ha. You obviously haven't tried to do that yet. asm.js is intended to be a compiler target for many languages. It only succeeds for two languages (C/C++), thanks to emscriptem more than asm.js, and even that is not trivial. It takes significant effort to port most C/C++ applications...otherwise they wouldn't have their own codebases, they would just be a different target on a makefile. If it were as simple as you make it out to be, we would have hundreds of languages compiling to asm.js by now; C/C++, but also every language that compiles to C/C++ or LLVM bytecode. As it is, we have maybe a couple dozen large legacy codebases that have been ported.

> It's not a VM, there's no JIT involved.

A VM does not necessarily imply JIT, but that is beside the point. A VM executes bytecode, and asm.js is an attempt to use javascript as bytecode. Javascript wasn't designed as a VM, and several of its "features" actively subvert its use as a VM, which is why asm.js relies on guarantees that you will not use those features.

If getting the performance that asm.js developers expect out of asm.js requires the use of a browser that optimizes for asm.js, then the solution isn't cross-platform. In fact, it isn't really any better than NaCL, god forbid.

<comment><USER3> > If Opera/Dolphin/Safari/whatever don't ever implement optimizations for > asm.js, its not really cross-platform anymore. Sure, theoretically they can > execute the code, but the performance will be so far from the expectations > of the developer that they will just end up telling the user to switch to > Firefox (maybe Chrome if they can ever catch up).

I'm not sure that's really true. It doesn't have to be ultra-fast, just good enough.

> If it were as simple as you make it out to be, we would have hundreds of > languages compiling to asm.js by now; C/C++, but also every language that > compiles to C/C++ or LLVM bytecode. As it is, we have maybe a couple dozen > large legacy codebases that have been ported.

Er, well, there aren't many languages which compile to native code. People can't compile Java, C#, JavaScript, Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP, etc. to native code. C/C++ do compile to native code, however.

> Ha. You obviously haven't tried to do that yet.

Oh, I have. I realise it has some difficulty to it.

> If getting the performance that asm.js developers expect out of asm.js > requires the use of a browser that optimizes for asm.js, then the solution > isn't cross-platform. In fact, it isn't really any better than NaCL, god > forbid.

I'm not sure what you think asm.js is the solution to. Its purpose is for running native applications in the browser. It's not for making ordinary JS apps run fast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm often dismissive of Mozilla, for being so all-over-the-map and unfocused sometimes. However, I'm grateful for them being the only browser player that really does seem interested in progressing JavaScript.

All of the other players seem more focused on transpiling solutions, which are really about replacing JavaScript with something else under their control. Mozilla is pretty much the only player that genuinely works to improve JavaScript without another agenda.

<comment><USER6> asmjs is a transpiling solution. No one is going to rewrite UnityEngine in hand-written asmjs. The vast majority of asmjs code is going to be transpiled, you can literally see it in the name: _asm_

<comment><USER3> Yes, it is a transpiling solution, but it's one that's a subset of JavaScript. This means it's compatible with all JS engines and lives in the same ecosystem.

It's quite different from, say, NaCl or Dart, which introduce a completely new language with a new set of APIs.

<comment><USER6> Dart the platform is compatible with all JS engines, Dart2JS.

I could rightly claim that DartVM is just a specialized two-stage compiler that kicks in to give a speed boost.

Compatible != portable. In the real world, performance matters. If I deploy my new triple-A game to the Web, and I'm only going to get 60fps on 25% of the browsers, and 15fps on the rest of them, do I really consider it the same ecosystem?

<comment><USER7> > If I deploy my new triple-A game to the Web, and I'm only going to get 60fps > on 25% of the browsers, and 15fps on the rest of them, do I really consider > it the same ecosystem?

This was always an issue on the web. Browsers have always had speed differences on that scale - either due to browser optimizations, or running on much weaker hardware (a phone vs. a powerful desktop). We've never had consistency the way consoles do, which is why AAA games run best there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They forgot to include two things:

      * Performance on the native architecture
      * Performance on other browsers (Chrome/IE in particular)

</comment><comment><USER9> would love to know how is the performance in V8 chrome js engine??

<comment><USER10> Run it with your Chrome and post the results:

[http://kripken.github.io/Massive/](http://kripken.github.io/Massive/)

<comment><USER11> I have Intel i7 running on Linux.

Got 2,984 running Chrome 38 and 8,778 on Firefox 33, but I think now it's just fair to wait for couple of iterations of Chrome to identify bottlenecks and fix them.

It's not uncommon for benchmarks to focus on some particular strength/weakness that is easily fixable. The same happened with Firefox and Octane 2.0.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if Chrome is ever going to catch up to Firefox here. It's been slower than Firefox at asm.js ever since it was announced, because Chrome doesn't do AOT compilation for it.

EDIT: Although I suppose JIT compilers would love asm.js as it has all the type info they want, but there's probably tons of overhead there thus explaining how Chrome has worse results.

<comment><USER12> I would say Google team has other priorities....

<comment><USER3> Yes, like trying to destroy the open web with NaCl.

<comment><USER13> I don't really understand how asm.js is any different...

you've still got applications compiled into binary blob, the difference between NaCl and asm.js being that asm.js just happens to be binary encoded as executable JavaScript.

<comment><USER3> asm.js isn't a binary blob, it's JavaScript. It's not a threat to a web of open standards.

<comment><USER6> It's a blob transpiled from C, not exactly how people imagined the Web working a few years ago. It's a non-W3C/TC39 approved set of compiler intrinsics/pragmas that switches on special behavior in one particular environment.

When Dart was introduced years ago, Brendan Eich was all over HN complaining about how Dart2JS doesn't solve the problem, because DartVM would be more performance, and introduce a tendency to optimize JS VMs towards those semantics. Well, here we have a different problem. If asmjs takes off and everyone starts writing Web apps by transpiling C code, Mozilla will have forced a sea change in the Web, forcing all other vendors into ahead-of-time compilation to compete, and forcing JS VMs to optimize for this particular kind of code.

Now, maybe that's not such a bad thing. I'm not arguing it isn't, but I think arguing "it's just JS, the syntax is the same, therefore it's open!" is somewhat disingenuous. ASMJS, if super successful, would create an implicit implementation spec for everyone. It will have in essence, created a language with identical syntax to Javascript, but with completely different expected execution semantics.

Why? Because developers would come to _depend_ on ahead-of-time compilation, depend on apps that basically use emulated malloc'ed heaps, etc.

Imagine I took the Java language, removed "new" and forced all code to allocate DirectBuffers, and then said, all classes must consist of static final methods (no polymorphism), and can't have any fields or constructors.

Call this ASMJAVA. I now assert, this is "Just java", hey, it runs in any JVM. Except, I'm shipping a new VM called "SuperExpresso" that does ahead-of-time compilation for my mobile platform based on this, and I'm telling people they don't need to use native SDKs, they can just transpile C code to Java. Did I create a new standard? I think I just did.

Arguably, you can say the same thing about Android 4.4/5.0 "ART" runtime, or GWT which I work on. They use the Java "language", but the runtime behavior is completely different, and at least for GWT, we make no bones about this.

So, this is not an attack on asmjs, but I do think there is a distinction between "reusing the syntax" of a language, and creating expectations of new semantics. Languages carry with them implicit sets of runtime performance characteristics, even bugs, that developers tend to treat holistically.

Not many people care about what the specs say. They care about how it runs in the real world.

<comment><USER3> > It's a blob transpiled from C, not exactly how people imagined the Web > working a few years ago.

It's not readable, nicely-formatted JS, sure, but neither is the optimised, minified JS most sites served. It is, however, valid JavaScript. It uses open standards (ECMAScript, the various web APIs). It's already supported by all browsers.

> It's a non-W3C/TC39 approved set of compiler intrinsics/pragmas that > switches on special behavior in one particular environment.

It's not "special behaviour". It's a performance optimisation. It still behaves exactly like JavaScript.

> If asmjs takes off and everyone starts writing Web apps by transpiling C > code, Mozilla will have forced a sea change in the Web, forcing all other > vendors into ahead-of-time compilation to compete, and forcing JS VMs to > optimize for this particular kind of code.

I don't see why people would write Web apps by transpiling C code, the main advantage is for the existing codebases written in C. And other vendors don't _necessarily_ need to implement asm.js with AOT compilation. asm.js-conformant code works well very with JIT compilers.

> Now, maybe that's not such a bad thing. I'm not arguing it isn't, but I > think arguing "it's just JS, the syntax is the same, therefore it's open!" > is somewhat disingenuous. ASMJS, if super successful, would create an > implicit implementation spec for everyone. It will have in essence, created > a language with identical syntax to Javascript, but with completely > different expected execution semantics.

No, it has identical execution semantics. It uses a static subset of JS, yes, but it's still JavaScript. If I remove the _" use asm"_ pragma, the code still does _exactly_ the same thing.

> Why? Because developers would come to depend on ahead-of-time compilation, > depend on apps that basically use emulated malloc'ed heaps, etc.

Is that bad? Bear in mind that, without asm.js existing, this was the case anyway. asm.js wasn't created so that people could compile native code to run in the browser. It was created because people were already doing so, and by detecting the code patterns commonly used by compilers, they could make it run faster.

> Call this ASMJAVA. I now assert, this is "Just java", hey, it runs in any > JVM. Except, I'm shipping a new VM called "SuperExpresso" that does ahead- > of-time compilation for my mobile platform based on this, and I'm telling > people they don't need to use native SDKs, they can just transpile C code to > Java. Did I create a new standard? I think I just did.

Sure, you made a new standard. It's a backwards-compatible one that doesn't rupture the ecosystem, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How we could have stopped swine flu (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/howwecouldhavestoppedswineflu

<comment><AUTHOR> This is interesting because even though it doesn't mention it, it seems the same technique would have worked for the current ebola outbreak.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you take freelance jobs outside of your day job? - <AUTHOR>

For those of you who have full time jobs with competitive salaries, do you still continue to take freelance/contractor/consultant work? If so, is it the same type of work you do at your day job? <comment><USER2> absolutely - freelance work affords me the ability to remodel my house, take nicer vacations, new laptop, new phone, etc...

my day job is as a systems admin and i take care of the websites. my freelance is supporting some friends offices and web development so roughly the same thing.</comment>


How not to advertise for a job in London - <AUTHOR> http://programmingisterrible.com/post/113428268598/how-not-to-advertise-for-a-job-in-london <comment><USER3> Whether it's illegal or not, I sort of wish more employers would just advertise like this anyway - just tell me you're really only interested in a 23 year old, so I can avoid wasting both our time. Theoretically, the market will reward them with ... whatever comes of having a bunch of 23 year olds running mission-critical aspects of your business. Might be massive success, might be failure, but let them get on with it.

<comment><USER4> Yes the amount of people that want to interview me is high in Barcelona. The amount of people that want to pay for my level of experience is low (and the wages aren't especially high here). Save us both the time and tell me in advance what you are willing to pay.

<comment><USER5> Setting experience requirements (high and low) is legal. Flat out stating an age isn't, in both the US and the UK.

<comment><USER6> Setting a maximum experience requirement isn't legal in the US because it has a disparate impact on older applicants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is either really good satire or really depressing.

It's like every HR buzzword has been shoved into a single requirements doc, and then some bizarre ones added for good measure (it's a bonus if you like to wear headphones apparently?)

I'm going to print this out and stick it on my wall - no matter how bad my professional life gets, I will be reminded at least I don't work here.

<comment><USER8> This was discussed in slack and as far as we can tell, it's legit. His responses were to the similar effect, he did soften it saying he would give bonus points to the applicants who meets the 'preferences'(!). That was until his apology of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Under "common behaviours of our ideal candidate" in the HR doc posted:

> 8\. Just a nice dude

It seems obvious to me that this is outright illegal gender discrimination, am I wrong?

<comment><USER10> You're not wrong at all. Furthermore:

> 2\. Under 30 years old

Is obviously age discrimination as well. Unlike some people, I'm under no illusions that tech is non-discriminatory, but it's still surprising and disappointing to see it stated so plainly on a job description.

These people are idiots for leaving this document online now that they've been caught. I don't know the specifics of UK labour laws, but in the US its mere existence would be grounds for a lawsuit.

<comment><USER11> _" The Equality Act 2010 makes it unlawful to discriminate against employees, job seekers and trainees because of their age."_ [1]

[1] [http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1841](http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1841)

<comment><USER12> Wait, UK only adopted this in 2010? Sorry, I am surprised by that

<comment><USER11> The Employment Equality (Age) Regulations [1] made age discrimination illegal beginning in 2006. Before that it was not illegal. The 2010 act, among other things, extended protection for age discrimination to other people such as prospective employees.

I'm British, and the fact that we only got around to this in 2006 seems to me to be fairly shameful.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Equality_(Age)_Regul...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Equality_\(Age\)_Regulations_2006)

<comment><USER12> well, we've got plenty of shameful things in the US that we haven't gotten around to fixing, so no worries

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you were as confused by the "Magic Pitch" requirement as I was, here is an explanation from the startup itself:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XqYXP1Azsk&t=1m18s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XqYXP1Azsk&t=1m18s)

Essentially, they want candidates to pitch to employers using a short video.

The idea of candidate videos has been floated about since before YouTube. I remember discussing it with a large job board owner over 10 years ago, and several times since, and there's always been a consensus that no real company would touch it with a 10 foot pole, mainly because seeing the candidate means you know their age, race and gender, all protected employment categories. It's a complete non-starter, and the founder is being really naive for his failure to look around and realize that if no one is doing something so painfully obvious and easy to implement, the market has spoken.

For what it's worth, attaching a photo to your resume, while taboo in the English speaking world, is acceptable in some European countries (Italy, Germany, France) and even preferred in some Asian countries. Personally, I hope this practice dies out, because of all the discrimination it inevitably leads to. I recall a large study that showed that attractive women (surprise) and unattractive men received significantly fewer callbacks compared to unattractive women/attractive men and/or when their photo was added to their otherwise identical resume.

<comment><USER14> Is that really the reason why?

I'm pretty sure you would get somebody's age, race and gender just by reading their resume/CV, which most job boards allow potential hiring companies to peruse.

<comment><USER15> The difference is how easy it will be for a candidate to make the claim that you must have known about what protected classes they belong to when you discarded them as a candidate.

If all you have is the CV, possibly anonymised, you can feign ignorance or genuinely be ignorant of the candidates age, race and gender in a way that will be absolutely impossible to pull off if you've seen them on video.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> ...aaaannd there goes the "faith in humanity"-budget for the day. There can't be many people applying to such job offers, right?

(Also, video-pitch for a job as a backend developer? What's the logic behind that except "let's see through how many hoops they'll jump")

<comment><USER17> I checked it out the other day, and his whole start-up was based on this 30-second video "magic-pitch" thing, which is why they had it for their own candidates, I guess.

<comment><USER16> So along the lines of "use our product for your application"? That would make some resemblance of sense...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> @xiangyu_wu deleted his twitter account and Topsy doesn't seem to have the incriminating tweets, any other archive?

<comment><USER17> I managed to see his tweets, where he apologised for his job-posting, by googling for his twittername and looking it up at google cache.

<comment><USER18> Thanks, so his last tweet before nuking his account was:

"Apologies for my discriminative job advert. It was totally wrong. Going forwards, we're adopting a more ethical hiring procedure."

<comment><USER17> He seem to have nuked his linkedin account and similar such accounts as well.

<comment><USER19> This doesn't make a lot of sense, assuming Xiangyu Wu is his actual name.

Moreover while I can understand deleting a Twitter account after a Tweetstorm, deleting your professional Linked In profile seems pointless at best, unless I am missing something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yo I actually know the dude from school...feel like I owe him a bit of a defense after his minute of twitter infamy :) I'd understand the anger if this were, like, a Goldman Sachs-calibre company practicing age-based discrimination, but in this case there's no _they_ , there's literally just _a guy_ plus some coder friends of his, getting a bit excited about startup plans.

The dude's 23 (plus or minus) himself, and decidedly not versed in HR laws - <USER2> could imagine the words "discrimination" (...or "political correctness"...or maybe "self-awareness") didn't even enter his mind while he typed away at his dream candidate wish list. Sure it's hilarious, but maybe cut him some slack re: sinister intentions. I don't think it's too pleasant waking up and getting a hundred angry retweets for something like this.

<comment><USER21> I agree that Hanlon's Razor should be applied here, and yes, this twitterstorm should know its limits (see [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how- one-stupid-tw...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid- tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?_r=0) and [http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that- spiraled...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled-way- out-of-control/))

However, I'd like to take you up on two points:

> I'd understand the anger if this were, like, a Goldman Sachs-calibre company > practicing age-based discrimination

Are you claiming that small companies should be free to discriminate against protected characteristics with impunity, and that only large companies should be held to account for bad behaviour? Where do you draw the line?

> decidedly not versed in HR laws

As far as I can see, Career Harbour claims to be a revolutionary recruitment company, xiangyu_wu claims to be its founder and CEO.

In order to make those claims, one must have at least a cursory knowledge of the law and customs pertaining to recruitment. "Know the rules well so that you can break them effectively"

Although I can't back this up with quotes now, as the site has disappeared, I think I read that they wanted to "disrupt" recruitment and were targeting the milkround market, by allowing applicants to apply to all the big names with just one form. They may not be a Big Company themselves, but they are pitching themselves as the gateway to them. Were I to apply to PWC or KPMG or whoever through them (with a "magicpitch" video), I wouldn't be surprised to find that they'd not even sent it on, due to the shortage and greyness of my hair and colour of my skin.

Also, (again, I can't back it up, because his own tweets have vanished) it looks like some of the ire comes not just from the awful ad itself, but from his attempt to defend it (e.g. [https://twitter.com/digitalmaverick/status/57606722316234752...](https://twitter.com/digitalmaverick/status/576067223162347520)). That said, in his defence, he has "had a change of heart", which may mean that he is repentant.

Anyway, if, as he wishes his employees to be, he is a "nice dude" who "celebrates failure" and can "accept difficult challenges as opportunity for growth" and "deal with setbacks and failure on a continuous basis", this event will be bread-and-butter for him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> >> Enters into a state of Flow, where when the candidate is coding a long time they are wired in and cannot easily get distracted

Haha, TBH almost every programmer I know under 30 years old is distracted every 90 seconds by a) a tweet, b) a text, c) a notification, or d) an email. Wait, actually that's all of us, under 30 or not.

<comment><USER23> But you have control over when you are responding to said distraction, so it won't necessarily get you out of the zone.

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends on how you are wired. I can't not react to external stimuli, and being in an environment with a lot of stimuli I can't control raises my stress level pretty quickly.

<comment><USER24> i allow myself to be impacted by this too much, but I would still say we do have control, as we choose to allow ourselves to be exposed to the stimuli, right? the provided examples above a-d can all be controlled by not having your phone in front of you, and closing non-coding applications.

desk drive-bys and kitchen cake on the other hand, are much less likely for me to resist

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> [https://www.facebook.com/careerharbour](https://www.facebook.com/careerharbour)

"We introduced our first professionally designed CV template. You may purchase it at email@example.com You get a free preview."

(How do you purchase something at an e-mail address ?)

[http://www.careerharbour.co.uk/](http://www.careerharbour.co.uk/) is down.

Profile on linkedin seems to have disappeared.

Facebook has been silent since the beginning of March (after an avalanche of posts since the beginning of the year).

Smells like a failed/failing startup...

Does someone know more ? Didn't really care much (I just wanted to know what kind of company they were) but now I'm curious.

</comment><comment><USER8> Context: This ad first appeared in a slack channel and straightaway people called him out and why it's wrong. Someone decided to call him out on twitter instead. Twitterstorm.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's not clear to me, was this ad placed _through_ Career Harbour or _by_ Career Harbour? Their site is down at the moment, but they appear to be an HR- type of company.

Either way, it's bad news, since they either placed a blatantly discriminatory ad themselves or they failed to warn a client that such ads are illegal in the UK (pretty big failure for a career services company).

<comment><USER27> I would not be shocked if the ad is some internal document they use as an illustration of what not to put in job ads.

Then they can have a discussion around it. This item is illegal. This item is going to put off many candidates. This item is unclear. And so on.

edit: From other comments about people from the company nuking their online presence, maybe it was real. Huh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The ideal candidate displays and implements "pushing forward motions". They... wave their hands in the air?

This is a wind up, surely!

<comment><USER19> Fav part:

"b. come to the office every time a line of code is written."

Not sure how you would get anything done at all, if you had to run to the office every single time you hit the return key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> When I initially saw the ad, I thought it was satire. Didn't think it could be real.

</comment><comment><USER30> There are a bunch of things about this document that are not legal in England. Age, sex, and long working hours are all things theycan be done for.

</comment><comment><USER31> Once a recruiter asked me if I had 10 years of experience in a specific technology which is there for less than 5 years...I hung up the phone...

<comment><USER32> I had a recruiter turn me down for a job interview as I didn't have experience with 'Marcos' on my CV. I think he meant Macros, but I was too busy laughing to find out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Surely that can't be for real. I saw it a few days ago and immediately thought it was a parody... but...

</comment><comment><USER14> They forget to add:

"Well qualified candidates will have a brilliant, well-defined business plan for a start-up idea that does not suck, which you will sign over to us in order to have the privilege of interviewing for this junior position."

</comment><comment><USER34> Setting aside its illegality, what strikes me here is how unintentionally hilarious this job posting is. I'm laughing just thinking about someone earnestly creating this, and maybe even someone else approving it for publication.

</comment><comment><USER35> Out of curiosity, are these discrimination laws hard and fast in in the UK? At least, in the U.S., most of these laws explicitly only affect a company above a certain number of employees.

<comment><USER36> They apply whether you have 1 employee or 50,000.

<comment><USER37> Individual ones do collective ones consultation of redundancy and so on do have a minimum size.

Though some elements of the Tory party and Ukip want to do away with all those laws

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Long Term Goals:

1\. Self-actualisation

2\. Starting their own company

3\. Change the world</comment>


Why is there no Git workflow for non-devs? - <AUTHOR> it seems like a lot of the principles could be transposed (in some way) to how marketing, ops, legal, etc. work - why isn't there a product that does this? <comment><USER2> Without have the ability to merge two files that have started from the version and then diverged, git loses a lot of its usefulness, IMO. Unfortunately it's not trivial to merge the type of files that other professions use (eg: images for marketers or drawings for architects or even standard .doc word files). Not to say that conceptually it shouldn't be possible to merge the files, but the tech isn't there.

</comment><comment><USER3> So this was something that a former boss/colleague and I kinda worked on for a few months at a prior company to help architects collaborate on global development standards.

There was a base set of standards which evolved over time, and regions whose standards would extend that base in different ways.

We actually got to the point where a small team of architects would write these standards in Markdown, use GitHub Desktop to manage their branching/PR- ing/reviewing workflows, and then tag releases. Then Jenkins would pick up the tag and process the Markdown with Pandoc to produce DOCX and PDF documents that adhered to our corporate style guide.

IIRC there were a few reasons why it never got widespread adoption. One thing that sticks is that even after we taught people how to use git and they ran with it while pushing out updates, without the daily reinforcement (e.g. like what software workflows require) the knowledge just didn't seem to stick.

The whole thing was really slick; in retrospect I wish we would have given a small talk about it and open sourced the workflow as an example. If nothing else, it reinforced my belief that with _just a little more polish_ force- multiplying dev tools could save people in other industries a lot of time/effort.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's no easy way to explain why Git is powerful.

It's hard to conceptualise things like branching for non-dev's (or beginners). Even the name "branch" implies similarities to a tree branch, but branches from a tree don't merge back into the tree so the analogy kind of falls apart.

One of the biggest advantages of git is the diff and merge algorithms, merging in changes from multiple different sources is relatively easy. This is only really possible with "text" files, compiled documents like word and excel are much hard to negotiate merging.

Basically, if you can make the concepts of Git easy to understand, make merging work with other files, then it can be applied everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER5> Contrarily to what devs may think git is a fairly complicated and powerful system for steep learning curve, especially for your average Joe.

I'm by no means a full time programmer, but I do program few times a week and sometimes I get lost/break state in git. Now imagine that happens in you typical company where people have problems with basic computer uses sometime.

</comment><comment><USER6> The mental overhead and complexity is simply not worth the investment. Geeks are already killing themselves for fun and profit with similar tools, geeks understand the underlying logic, know where to find info, etc. Non-geeks can't fathom why would anyone go through all this. Usually there is no satisfactory answer other than: it's pretty cool, you can solve ${crazy corner case}, look you can ${enter 5 commands with 6 flags each}.

</comment><comment><USER7> The workflow and needs are completely different. The final deliverable of most non-dev groups rarely need to be able to jump back to a prior commit. You don't read a sentence in a legal document, and say, "That doesn't quite sound right, let me go git bisect to see where we broke the wording...", you just fix it.

Once you throw out the need to step back through a commit history, then all you really need is tracked changes, and that is well supported in both Word and Google Docs.

</comment><comment><USER8> Using a git GUI is a less 'technical' option, but no matter who the target audience, there'll be some learning involved.

One 'non-code' example: document editors (e.g., Microsoft Word) have a version of this in tracking of changes (with reversion options).

More practically, I don't think there are many domains where the granularity of control over 'versions' is as useful as with digital files.

</comment><comment><USER9> The UI itself would have to make it clear what is happening. So clear that it can be used without training. Is this even possible to achieve? maybe yes. I've seen visual representations of branch and re-base that make it clear what is going on, but they were teaching tools, not the actual tool itself.

The developer of the UI may be biased as they already have the hard-won knowledge of branch, merge, multiple remotes, pull/push, etc. The biased developer will confuse good looks UI with intuitiveness. Or they will go down the wrong path and create a UI that is very practical for people who already have hard-won knowledge, but no so much for normal people.

The biased developer will think the answer to these problems is "training" instead of making the UI naturally visually intuitive.

</comment><comment><USER10> Lots of people use Jira for non programming related things. One of the guys who works at Jira used it to assign tasks to the family for preparation of thanksgiving dinner :)

<comment><AUTHOR> haha nice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting question. I would say that collaborative editing of documents with changelog kind of captures that. For e.g Google Docs.

The checkout, edit, diff, merge, review, build, release workflow might be too onerous for other teams.

Curious to know, why do you ask this question?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, fair point! I think adaptations can be made. So I'm not a dev, but I've worked on product for a while. Bridging dev workflow and 'rest of business' workflow shows vast inefficiency gaps all over the place for the latter. I feel the trail of decision-making goes missing at the moment too.

This also peaked my curiosity: [https://a16z.com/2020/01/09/the-developers- way/](https://a16z.com/2020/01/09/the-developers-way/) and resonated...a lot haha.

\+ something I'd love to see productised/productise myself.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you used a resume writing service? - <AUTHOR> I was recently laid off and haven't received much a response to my resume submissions[1] so I was contemplating having a 3rd party re-write my resume for the first time in my career. The resume writing company[2] my previous employer recommended looks outdated so I'm skeptical to pay them their asking price of $600. Has anyone here used a resume writing service?<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082757<p>[2] http://www.career-resumes.com <comment><USER2> A few years ago we used this service for my wife's resume who works on the business end of IT. It worked great, her callback rate went through the roof and she landed a gig in our new city in no time.

I don't know as much how well it would work out for programming jobs, IMO the best thing to do there is just to know someone.

[https://resumetointerviews.com/](https://resumetointerviews.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I used a resume reviewing service before (can't remember which one) just because my friend had a free credit. They were not very helpful at all they basically send some pre typed suggestions that you could find on anywhere. Granted, I already had have several people look at it and considered it well done. If you're interested in having a second set of eyes on your resume I'd be glad to give you some feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, resume can be found on my website:

[https://www.amarkota.com/resume](https://www.amarkota.com/resume)

<comment><USER4> I don't see anything terrible with it.

You should definitely remove your high school and elementary schools from your resume.

Your resume seems unfocused. You list a wide range of skills from Business Continuity and Budget Accountability, to Machine Learning, to NewSQL and UML. There is nothing in this resume that suggests to me that if I was looking for candidate for a machine learning role, that you would be the right one.

What type of jobs are you applying for? I would focus your resume on the specific job requirements they are looking for.

If the job is looking for a backend engineer, I would not list due diligence / compliance at the top of the resume.

If you are looking for CTO level positions, I don't think you'll have that much luck with random online job submissions. Finding people through your network would probably go better.

The book "Never Eat Alone" has some good tips: [https://www.amazon.com/Never- Eat-Alone-Expanded-Updated/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Never-Eat-Alone- Expanded-Updated/dp/0385346654)

<comment><USER3> You took the words right out of my mouth. I think the descriptions of positions are really well written but resume as a whole seems unfocused. The second I go to your resume I should know what your greatest skills/achievements are. When I see that you say your "areas of expertise" include strategic planning, machine learning, recruiting, and angular I instantly get the feeling that you are aren't actually an expert in any of these areas. I might suggest trying to limit your areas of expertise to two or three that are related to the type of job you're seeing and give examples of work you've done in those areas. Then just move the rest down to skills. Put a link to your stack overflow (just to give more legitimacy). It would also be nice if this was printer friendly (though I assume you're submitting a pdf to most apps). You might also want to swap the instructor and Ria Financial positions since the latter is newer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you all for taking the time to review and write feedback. I thought the 'Technology Executive | Chief Technology Officer | IT Strategy Executive' title would make it clear the kinds of roles I am looking for but maybe not since multiple commenters here weren't sure.

Yes, there is a PDF version[1] that I submit to job postings / recruiters (which I should have probably linked to instead) that I just updated based on the feedback. It now includes a re-written Area of Expertise section to be more on the management side but moving actual technologies I am hands-on with to a new Skills section on the second page.

I haven't updated the /resume web page yet but may retain my k-12 education since I get asked a lot if I'm authorized to work in the US or if I need sponsorship. Maybe I should just write US Citizen :)

[1] [https://www.amarkota.com/resume/pdf](https://www.amarkota.com/resume/pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your resume will not get you any job you want. Finding a connection with a decision maker, however you can & then following their guidance on how to jump through their company hoops is infinitely more effective.

<comment><USER6> I don't disagree with this, however, what is the best way to reach out to these decision makers? Is there a good template or a good way?</comment></comment>


This guy built a data center with Lego and Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/20/this-guy-built-a-data-center-with-lego-and-raspberry-pi/

<comment><USER2> I love that they did this as a model to demonstrate certain aspects of their fail-safe system. I can see how that makes for a very approachable demo at a conference or trade show. Imagine turning up for a sales pitch and pulling Lego out of the boot of the car?! Awesome. Wanna see what happens when one of your cluster suddenly becomes a Tie-Fighter? No problem.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you recommend preparing for technical interviews? - <AUTHOR>

I was recently laid off and I'm back in the job market for the first time in a number of years. I have several technical interviews coming up.
One (Amazon) specifically mentions reviewing basics like data structures, algorithms, etc. I don't have a formal CS background, so I feel unprepared.
What resources, techniques, etc. do you recommend to prepare for technical interviews? <comment><USER2> There are many kinds of technical interviews, and the optimal way to prepare for each is pretty different. So the first thing I'd do is try to figure out how the interview system for any given prospective employer works.

Some places just ask relatively formulaic questions that you can just prepare for with a couple of web searches. Visit a random page for 'technologyX interview questions', and you'll cover that kind of technical screening. That said, I personally consider that an employer that resorts to that kind of interview is probably not really all that good at hiring, and a company that isn't good at hiring is rarely a company worth working for.

Another common kind of technical interview will, instead of going through random technology questions, follow a similar pattern but with more 'book questions' than practical questions. Algorithms and all that. While this kind of interview is harder to game than the first, it's still IMO relatively low quality, because it has to either be very basic, or rely on information that, if actually needed on the job, you could just figure out by going to a reference. It's not as if there's that much to gain by having employees that have memorized The Art Of Programming. What I really want, algorithms-wise, is someone that can research an algorithm, or choose one from some alternatives. I do not care if you do not know how to build an optimal quadtree to calculate collisions in 2d space: What is valuable is that if I tell you that you should calculate said collisions, you can actually find an algorithm that works, and could explain it if asked.

So all in all, that kind of technical interview if often a crapshoot, as you can never know exactly which kinds of algorithms the interviewer will be interested on that day. Which is why the best you can do to prepare for that kind of interview is to just figure out what specific kind of questions are going to be asked.

And finally, there's my favorite kind of technical interview: Actual live coding, either from a well defined problem statement, or by working on an existing codebase, which one hopes has been handed to you a little bit in advance. This approach is straight out of Peopleware: You'd not hire a juggler if you've not seen him juggle, right?

So, in short. depending on the interview type, either try one of the many random sites on the internet that dole out technical questions, read some basic algorithms book, or if handed a codebase, study the heck out of it.</comment>


Create Maintainable Rails Apps with "Fat Controller" Form Objects - <AUTHOR> https://oozou.com/blog/ensuring-maintainability-in-large-rails-apps-fat-controllers-done-right-34 <comment><AUTHOR> I've been playing with Form Objects and realized that fat controllers were in a lot of ways better than fat models. Most of the apps I see now have huge models and lots of issues around callbacks, validations and side-effects. By using form objects I've moved the logic back into the controllers but abstracted them in a more logical way that creates a much better divide between responsibilities.</comment>