Why Coding Tests Are A Bad Interview Technique - <AUTHOR> http://www.brandonsavage.net/why-coding-tests-are-a-bad-interview-technique/ <comment><USER2> _My biggest pet peeve with these types of tests is this: there are a lot of companies out there, and I'm sending out resumes to each one that I can find._

That's your first mistake.

Why should a company take you seriously if you don't take them seriously? Every resume you send out should be custom written and carefully crafted to address _their_ requirements, not yours. Do you do any research into the companies you're applying to? You should.

Rather than sending out 50 stock resumes, you'd probably be better off picking the top half dozen or so opportunities and do everything you can to stand out. This includes a custom cover letter, follow up emails, thank you notes, etc., whatever it takes to make the connection.

 _I simply do not have the time to write fifteen code samples a day, just because you want to evaluate me against your coding test. Period._

There's your second mistake. Misdirected attitude. Again, you should be focused on _their_ needs, not yours. If you don't have time to do 15 poorly, then just do one or two very, very well. No employer or recruiter gives a damn that you've chosen a shotgun approach.

Give of yourself without expectations of something in return. You may be surprised at the "unexpected" dividends you'll reap later.

FWIW: I have conducted over 2500 technical interviews and every single one of them has had to code, regardless of experience or background. What good is a programmer who doesn't want to code at the one point when it would provide the most benefit to everyone involved? In my experience, the best programmers were the most eager to give it a shot.

<comment><USER3> How deep have you taken interview coding? Have you found that pseudo coding at a whiteboard is as effective as giving a candidate a test assignment on a box in the office?

I've also wondered about the effectiveness of reviewing candidate-submitted code samples vs some type of coding during the interview. Any thoughts there?

Have you found any other strong correlations between finding the best programmers in interviews other than the eagerness to tackle a programming problem?

I'm about to start searching to fill two positions now - I've struck out in my personal network, mainly because at this point I know people who are more senior and the positions I have are on the junior side, both in pay and responsibilities.

<comment><USER2> Discussed before:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=89669>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=834513>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=835092>

Hope these help.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article, and the one it links to for support, are self-refuting as far as I'm concerned. They make me think "be sure to have a coding test" if it keeps people who think like this away (specifically, people who think that they shouldn't have to try very hard and that their experience entitles them to preferential treatment).

<comment><USER5> Hey, that sounds like a good idea all round! It will also let experienced programmers know that they shouldn't bother applying to your shop (where their experience is not going to be recognized and valued).

<comment><USER4> They'd be right about that. Experience in and of itself counts for nothing. There are a great many programmers who have years of experience programming badly. Nor have I ever met a great programmer who cared a fig about how many years of experience they or anyone else had.

What counts is the value you can add now.

<comment><USER5> Good luck figuring out from a programming test whether someone is actually going to add value (rather than just be good at solving tests). Experience delivering quality work on time is a reasonable predictor of future success.

<comment><USER6> Wrong. It can easily be an indicator of a company (or series of companies) that doesn't want to go through the hassle of firing you.

<comment><USER5> I wrote "Experience delivering quality work on time" I didn't write "has a resume that only proves he showed for work for x number of years".

<comment><USER7> Those two look mostly the same on paper. I've looked at the linked-in profiles for people that I've worked with before. There are ones who absolutely sucked and were a net negative for the team, but who "helped deliver feature X" or "drove completion of project Y", but in fact, they probably actually delayed or at least lowered the quality bar of those very things they tout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > But asking a programmer to write a complete application for you is like > asking an electrician to build a small electrical grid for you before they > work on your house. Can you imagine if every plumber had to prove that they > could snake pipes before they could work on someone's plumbing?

I wonder if he realizes that we require electricians and plumbers to be licensed?

<comment><USER9> And furthermore, this is the reason why we have them licensed.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I always ask coding questions and I always ask a question or two that are extremely difficult. The goal is not to get the correct answers (although that is a nice bonus), but instead to see how the candidate thinks a problem through. A candidate's thought process is more important than their mad hacking skillz.

<comment><USER10> "how a candidate thinks" sounds like a very subjective criterion.

I wish there were more data behind people's interview practices. Do we know that people that think in way X are better employees than those that think in way Y? Why has HR mostly resisted empirical analysis?

<comment><AUTHOR> > "how a candidate thinks" sounds like a very subjective criterion.

Of course it is. What part of the interview process isn't subjective?

<comment><USER10> Yes. It is very subjective. Which is a shame. Empirical methods have revolutionized so much of the world, yet this piece of it remains resistant to positive change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you were interviewing to be a juggler, would you find it odd if they asked you to juggle during the interview?

The reason why plumbers and electricians aren't asked to perform on a small scale is that they are required to be licensed. Until developers are licensed (and I don't see that happening any time soon), small-scale tasks are the best way to learn about a candidate.

[Apologies to whoever I stole the juggling analogy from (I think it was on Reddit).]

<comment><USER12> I first saw the juggling analogy in _Peopleware_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If I'm really excited about a position, I'll write my own code sample before I go to an interview. I'll typically write either a simple igoogle module or possibly a simple feature on my own website, proxying some of their calls through my own web server.

I find it does a tremendous amount of good on both ends. It lets me explore their website and look at their apis, I get a better understanding of their tech stack, and by looking at their code (at least their client javascript code), I brush up on areas that they've tackled.

On the company's end, we can dive into some tangible code that I've written and they can code review my work and ask technical questions based on that. It also shows them I'm serious and will hit the ground running.

I much prefer talking about relevant code that I've just written to a trip to the whiteboard to answer an esoteric question or hard brain teaser. It's more like a real work environment and the questions, at least I think, are more authentic to the task: why did you implement that algorithm this way instead of another? what are the code's limitations or where can it be improved? how would it scale?

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been on both sides of this situation. I don't think there is a clear answer.

The fundamental problem is that interviews are a horrible way to select people. There is little correlation between doing well in an interview and being capable at your job. So in theory the more you make the interview be like the job, the more accurate an assessment it is.

For instance I have never seen an interview method produce better results when looking for a front end HTML person than giving them a picture of the page you want, giving them cutouts of all of the pieces they need, and asking them to write a web page that looks like that, will scale reasonably as you resize the browser, and with reasonably clean HTML. Seriously, I've seen the results that this test produces, and invariably it gives you someone that can actually produce web pages. Occasionally it lets someone with poor work ethic slip through, but that seems to be better than the alternative. _Particularly_ if the interviewer does not have the skillset you are looking to hire.

And then there is the time issue. I have seen interviewing for a new person suck up top talent for weeks on end. You need more resources, and you are losing proven, trained resources to do something they probably don't like! Yet unless you can have someone with the skills you're hiring in the room, the interview process can't weed out people who don't have the right skills. And as Joel's fizzbuzz test demonstrates, most candidates don't have the skills you need.

How bad is it? Well Joel claims a significant portion of candidates can't write a program to count numbers, but with every multiple of 3 replaced by "fizz", every multiple of 5 by "buzz", and every multiple of 15 replaced by "fizzbuzz". I believe it. I have found that over 2/3 of candidates when given a double-loop to compute the intersection of 2 arrays can't figure out how to make it more efficient. And good luck if you ask people to do something unusual like a depth-first traversal of a tree!

But there is a limit. It is easy to produce a simple application that looks reasonable, but which takes a lot longer to put together than you think it will. If you can't, knowing how it is supposed to go, personally do the exercise in an hour or two on a freshly set up machine, the exercise is too hard. Personally I far prefer having a test with some simpler questions rather than a full blown mini-application.

But the opposite extreme of depending on interviews to filter out bad people is worse. Much worse.

</comment><comment><USER14> I agree. I feel insulted when somebody asks me to write code during interview. Wondering whether one can ask the interviewer to write code?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's pointless to downvote the OP as his attitude is pretty common in my experience. There are _many_ programmers who react with disgust if you ask them anything that might be construed as beneath them... embrace that attitude, because it can help to end the interview early and prevent wasting everyone's time.

<comment><USER15> This is the truth. I've had candidates walk out of interviews when they learn that they'd be asked to write pseudo code showing some basic algorithmic competence.

It was bizarre.</comment></comment></comment>


Ray: A Distributed Framework for Emerging AI Applications - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.05889 <comment><USER2> Interesting Framework. Seems to hail from : > [https://rise.cs.berkeley.edu/](https://rise.cs.berkeley.edu/) Quite the bee- line from the authors' previous papers. It only seems to have been preceded by : [https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.03924](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.03924) However, the language in the [Ray] paper is completely different. Different from the preceding paper but familiarly distinct. Any specification of outside groups/companies/individuals who were consulted/collaborated with on this project? And who more or less lead the development and design? Maybe I am jumping the gun, but it clearly wasn't of the listed names.

Of all of the authors listed, none of their previous papers read like the Ray paper nor does the proposal paper (Real-Time Machine Learning : The missing pieces). [http://arxiv.org/abs/1703.03924](http://arxiv.org/abs/1703.03924) reads like a corporate/industry grade requirements/proposal doc which is a huge departure from all of the author's prior papers... So, out of the blue, corporate level infrastructure project proposal and completion within the span of a year?

Can any of the paper's authors speak more clearly on who led this project over what span of time, under what direction, and with which industry groups? I see no background or papers from the individuals priority listed in the paper reflective of the sort that creates a formalized and industry grade Distributed Computational Framework such as this. > Robert Nishihara > Philipp Moritz Are priority listed yet have no prior papers leading to such a development. To what degree did : [https://rise.cs.berkeley.edu/sponsors/](https://rise.cs.berkeley.edu/sponsors/) Drive this?

<comment><USER3> One of the authors here! We are glad you like it!

The project is indeed driven by the authors listed on the paper and also the knowledge and experience that was accumulated in the AMPLab (the predecessor of the RISELab, see [https://amplab.cs.berkeley.edu/](https://amplab.cs.berkeley.edu/)). If you look at the github history, we've been working on it for longer than a year and had various prototypes before that, so it doesn't come out of "thin air" ;)

The lab's sponsors are also helpful, some of them have been experimenting with the system internally and giving us feedback.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for responding. I indeed spent time/effort in way of my crafted reply because it caught me eye. I haven't fully parsed the paper but covered a number of pages that colored the nature of my inquiry. I in no way intended to take anything away from the author of the paper but wanted to get at what you yourself declared : "was accumulated in the AMPLab (the predecessor of the RISELab, see [https://amplab.cs.berkeley.edu/)"](https://amplab.cs.berkeley.edu/\)") as The backstory behind the paper as I clearly surmised there was one its historical nature. I also wanted to understand how long this was being worked due to the nature of the language used in the paper and how the concepts and language familiarly fit in with other things I've seen. And this right here : "The lab's sponsors are also helpful, some of them have been experimenting with the system internally and giving us feedback." Yes, I understand the nature of this is moreso for corporate use cases than it is for academic and furthering therein. I was in search of names but already have a number of them I can surmise and a handful more that I will derive. I think its interesting what is being done here but there were choice words that were stated in the paper that limit it. At this juncture and time in the state of AI development, I will reserve any other commentary beyond stating that there are an incredible amount of fundamental limits in approaching things this way that fall on deaf ears due to the shut off nature/sponsorship of such developments. I wish you guys the best and am sure there will be traction as it relates to RL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also related: [https://arrow.apache.org/blog/2017/08/08/plasma-in-memory- ob...](https://arrow.apache.org/blog/2017/08/08/plasma-in-memory-object- store/) . The Graphistry team has been super excited about Plasma as part of how we're getting our NodeJS stack to talk to more GPU & fast data compute pipelines, and suspect it'll help others as well. If you're looking for a cool nodejs winter project, happy to share roadmaps!

</comment><comment><USER5> There is a Decentralized AI Summit[0] happening in San Francisco in Feb that currently has a call for presenters. You should reach out and show off your work there.

[0] [http://decentralized-ai.com/](http://decentralized-ai.com/)

<comment><USER6> Ray isn't decentralized.

<comment><USER5> I would say distributed frameworks are in the wheelhouse typically when talking about decentralization and AI applications.

<comment><USER6> That connection is a stretch at best.

Virtually all modern "big data" platforms are necessarily "distributed" just by the virtue of taking up more than one computer. They also necessarily happen to have some kind of centralized "brain" (i.e. scheduler, which is what Ray basically is).

I know blockchain and AI are the hot buzzwords right now, but it's really not related to the kind of decentralized computing that you're probably thinking about (i.e. Golem-style agoric computing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does this stack against flink or spark or is it trying to solve something else ?

<comment><USER8> It's trying to solve different problems. AFAIK they're trying to tackle things like distributed reinforcement learning and control among a set of robots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://github.com/ray-project/ray](https://github.com/ray-project/ray)

</comment><comment><USER10> Can anyone comment on how Ray fits into the current distributed systems landscape? How does it compare to Spark, Hadoop, Akka, distributed Tensorflow, etc.?

It would be really helpful to have an FAQ on the github.io page that answers the question "When should I use Ray vs. X".

</comment><comment><USER11> I think this is amazing and hope it achieves its future goals of bringing computational speed up to the requirements for on the fly decision making. Bravo.

</comment><comment><USER12> hmm...have they checked out ROS? I feel like this can be built on top of ROS as a package rather than an independent framework.

[http://www.ros.org/](http://www.ros.org/)</comment>


Can We Decide Whether Small Computer Programs Halt? - <AUTHOR> http://mathoverflow.net/questions/153092/can-we-decide-whether-small-computer-programs-halt

<comment><USER2> I thought it weird that the guy who proposed n=7 wouldn't explain why, it probably boils down to something like you can implement 1-D cellular automaton rule 110 with n=8 (or smaller?) so he was probably aiming at something like "halt if you get more than a certain 1's density in a certain range" or something equally unprovable other than by running the thing. Or he has a way to make a Turing machine emulator in n=7.</comment>


Vue.js 2.1 Released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vuejs/vue/releases/tag/v2.1.0 <comment><USER2> For folks who haven't tried Vue yet, I just completed my first project with it and I'm really excited about using it more.

Specifically, I used learning Vue as an opportunity to upgrade a simple jQuery-based SPA (with a PHP backend) to ES6, JS modules and Vue. It was a little hairy to bite off all of that stuff at once, but the Vue community was really helpful. In contrast to more monolithic frameworks I didn't have to port everything at once, and the re-implementation of the bits I did port are _sooo_ much cleaner.

FWIW, there's a highly-rated Vue.js 2/Vuex Udemy course on sale for an impulse price of $14 (normally $190) as I type this. With the caveat that I _just_ bought the course myself, at that price it seems like a useful resource even if you only have a cursory interest in Vue.

[https://www.udemy.com/vuejs-2-the-complete- guide/](https://www.udemy.com/vuejs-2-the-complete-guide/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. With this coupon "CNETBF2016" it's now just $10 and I bought it at that price!

<comment><USER4> Guessing that's an affiliate promotion code?

<comment><USER3> Not from me. I'm just trying to pass on the savings to HN users. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So far my Vue.js experience has been great. Even though I don't particularly enjoy front-end development and the tools and techniques I'm supposed to use for them, Vue.js has been a breath of fresh air between my frustrations with HTML, Javascript, npm, CSS, HTTP and all the other things that are needed to stitch everything together. It really is a great framework.

The one thing that does still bug me these days is that even now that Vue 2.1 is out, many components I'd like to use are still not compatible with Vue 2.x, and almost all the Vue tutorials, questions, solutions, etc. I find are about Vue 1.x, which is mostly incompatible with Vue 2.x. But that should improve over time, of course.

<comment><USER6> are there any tutorials that would help a beginner start on that front?

<comment><USER7> I'm writing one! [https://github.com/thewhitetulip/intro-to- vuejs](https://github.com/thewhitetulip/intro-to-vuejs)

<comment><USER8> It's still pretty ripe big guy. You keep promoting it like you are further along. I kept looking thinking there was more and there wasn't. Great start and I'm even happy to assist you, but ease up on the promo unless yare inviting people to contribute.

Just a suggestion as someone who is keen to see a ton more on 2.x and is even also keen to help others like yourself; not against you or your efforts at all.

<comment><USER7> Pls don't take this personally, but I am not entirely sure what the problem is. I didn't say "I wrote one", I said, "I am writing one", which means it is not yet finished and is a work in progress.

Any and all contributions are always welcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am sorry if this sounds too ignorant, are frameworks like Vue.js (I actually read the guide and understood some wonderful things about its philosophy since I am actually developing backend mainly) or React, etc.. reasonable to use in websites in general (instead of jquery or taking some tasks from it) or they actually only reasonable for mobile web applications and SPAs?

What about the SEO and search engine rendering to custom HTML elements like in Vue.js components? is it okay or affects SEO?

<comment><USER10> I can't speak to Vue, but React is overkill for many sites. The virtual DOM etc is incredibly useful for sites that update the page very frequently, but if the only thing you're making is a static site and a contact form, you don't need React.

That said, I do like the React model of creating components (and suspect this is why so many people use it when it's unnecessary). I'm looking forward to browsers implementing custom elements so that we can all compinentise this way without the overhead of a large JS framework.

<comment><USER11> While the virtual DOM is a component in React's popularity, the main thing that I believe people use it for is the functional, one way data flow it allows you to use combined with the component model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don´t know why Riot.js (another js framework) don't attract more people. I used it and it´s awesome. Today they launched the 3.0.0 version [http://riotjs.com/release-notes/](http://riotjs.com/release-notes/) . Here is a quick introduction [http://vitomd.com/blog/coding/hello-riot-js-quick- tutorial-a...](http://vitomd.com/blog/coding/hello-riot-js-quick-tutorial- about-this-awesome-lib/) I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER13> I also love Riot. It makes custom tags. It's easy to author and debug w/o so many additional tools. Serverside or client-side rendering. Was a snap to plug Riot in to replace jQuery "components" in a mostly PHP driven app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > > [http://mithril.js.org/comparison.html](http://mithril.js.org/comparison.html)

> Vue's implementation cleverly hijacks array methods, but it should be noted > that Javascript Arrays cannot be truly subclassed and as such, Vue suffers > from abstraction leaks.

Can anyone who knows how vue is implemented explain this statement?

<comment><USER15> they are talking about limitations of change detection in Array [1]. It is technically true, but practically, it is not much (if you are aware of it)

[1] : [http://vuejs.org/v2/guide/list.html#Caveats](http://vuejs.org/v2/guide/list.html#Caveats)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been using Vue.js for a new project and it is a breath of fresh air after using React. It has all the benefits of Knockoutjs (which was my gateway into these types of frameworks), but much nicer in-code organization (I'm looking at you ko.observable).

</comment><comment><USER17> I am always looking for the fastest way to build a complete app. Brought me to Rails. Then to Meteor/React (which was mixed). Then some Rails/React which is ok.

Vue looks really appealing on the simplicity and completeness side.

I would like to know from people using Vue what backends you're using. In order to complete the loop - the simplest stack overall Vue+???.

<comment><USER18> I've used Vue w/ Rails so far and it's been pretty good. The one real complaint is that I really wish is that I could use Vue components (.vue files) in a better integrated way with the Rails asset pipeline.

react-rails does this really well, making JSX transformation a drop-in gem, vs. having to set up some kind of front end task runner of sorts and constantly having to commit compiled files and such.

Beyond that, Vue has been amazing, and I really love it.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the reply. Yea the rails asset pipeline integration seems an issue and Vue hot reload capability is also something I'd want workings seamlessly (not sure if that would be problematuc). Perhaps best to just use rails as API server. Then be able to create complete Vue front without struggling w integrations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice, I love Vue.js it is light weight yet fulfill 90% of the needs of a large SPA without a third party language, some bureaucratic dependency injection and without getting in the developer's way by mandating this or that build tool. But competition is good so I'm glad there is a front end framework for everyone out there.

<comment><USER20> The sentiment 'competition is good' in the context of Javascript universe is a bit ironic since that's what led us to the recent fatigue grievance.

<comment><USER19> People have different requirements, there is not a single framework that would make everybody happy. The issue isn't the the number of frameworks by the way but the complexity of the build tools in the context of Nodejs. Grunt,Gulp,Babel transpilers and co, they are not frameworks, they merely transform assets, yet they make JS development extremely complex and bureaucratic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm going to build a vuejs markdown site editor similar to Gatsby I just don't like Facebook it's refreshing that an independent project is gaining popularity the server side rendering is a big deal when you want to support mobile well.

<comment><USER22> Gatsby is awesome. Would love to see something like it without FB's licensing attached to the underlying libraries. Please do a Show HN when you've got something more-or-less working :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is this looking a lot like Angular 1.x to anyone else? I've heard it's actually more similar to React but I'm not seeing it... ?

<comment><USER24> It's like Angular in that they use a similar templating language, and it's like React in that they're using a component-based declarative DOM API.

<comment><USER25> Angular also has a component-based declarative DOM API. Always had, but since version 1.5 it's more explicit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Pleasure to work in Vue.js framework. Very easy learning curve. Simplicity is the biggest strength of this framework.

I have created few tutorials on Vue.js.

[https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ6Y8JfXAV-8_2lHNgP1DhC...](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ6Y8JfXAV-8_2lHNgP1DhCwvB6le3rty)

</comment><comment><USER27> So glad this project is gaining more and more traction. Been using it since very early releases, when I was sick of dealing with overly complex front end libraries.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm really excited about the scoped slots feature. Finally it's really easy to create components that can be customized by the user from the outside. For example, it's now really easy to create a data table (with features like filters and sort), and with each row showing not only the data text, but also any other feature you might want to embed in it (like attach click listeners to each row, or popup some menu on hover).

I believe there was a way (probably a complicated hacky way) to achieve this previously too, but I never investigated it too much. Now it's really easy.

Kudos to the Vue team for this release!

</comment><comment><USER29> In case someone user Meteor - Vue plays very nice with Meteor and there exists a great integration package [1], which means if you're familiar with Meteor you can write full stack applications with it very easily and quickly with it. The package supports hot module replacement out-of-the-box. It's also dead simple to start using it, if you already have Meteor installed it's a matter of running "npm install" and "meteor".

[1] [https://github.com/Akryum/meteor-vue- component](https://github.com/Akryum/meteor-vue-component)

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm looking to move a few projects from Angular 1. What do developers think of migrating to Angular 2 vs Vue for this? I've played with Angular 2 but can't shake the feeling that it's overly complex.

<comment><USER31> You may want to check out Aurelia too. One of Angulars main devs left the Angular Team because of its direction and build Aurelia the way Angular should have been.

I played with it a bit and what's awesome about it that you just write plain JS most of the time. No weird stuff like JSX and whatever. Docs arn't that great tho

<comment><USER32> It's worth noting that the developer who split from the Angular team to create Aurelia was also the developer of Durandal, which is quite a nice (and underrated) framework.

Aurelia is a sort of the spiritual successor to Durandal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I still wonder why they moved the events from the constructor to the instance...

Before 2.0:

new Vue({ el: "#el", data: someData, events: { myevent: function(){} } });

after 2.0 :

vm.$on('myevent', function () {})

<comment><USER34> Events in Vue 2 are now supposed to be used only for child -> parent component communication. If your needs are more complex then you're supposed to use Vuex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I found this guy creating a todo app using all popular js frameworks

[https://github.com/tastejs/todomvc/tree/master/examples](https://github.com/tastejs/todomvc/tree/master/examples)

including vue.js riot.js react, meteor, angular 1,2 dojo, duel, ember, jquery ....

it's a great way to compare frameworks

</comment><comment><USER36> I really miss 1.0's inline way of writing javascript anywhere inside the dom (attributes) via {{ execute_raw_js_code() }} as well as the ability to run filters on it. Is there anyway to get them back on Vue 2? I have to admit, this was a major step back for me when upgrading to Vue 2 from Vue 1.

I also really loved the Vue 1's way of handling transitions. Now having them inside it's own wrapper really diminishes the elegance I felt from Vue 1.

Wish there was some ways to get them back instead of having to downgrade.

<comment><USER34> Yes. Use computed properties.

<comment><USER36> Yeah you can use that but still you lose the liberated feeling of being able to execute js anywhere directly on the dom, which I actually appreciated quite a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm currently using (and enjoying) my first Vue project. I have to say the camelcase support for JSX events feels like a step backwards. The `on-` prefix had a nice semantic way of telling you that thing is an event (either DOM or $emit from component). Now there's just this implicit `onFoo` which could be an event, or could be a prop, maybe component will invoke it directly like in React, maybe it will $emit, who knows?

</comment><comment><USER38> I've been waiting for scoped slots for so long. I've implemented several workarounds since I started using Vue a year ago. Creating a directive to pre- compile a slot template in the child scope in Vue 1, and then once Vue 2 rolled around, making lots of functional components and passing them around. So glad they finally added this.

</comment><comment><USER39> I've been a long time React and Angular user, but is still sick to implement correctly enough SSR for my projects. And VueJS just did it elegantly ! I must say, thank all React + Angular folks as the pioneer for better CHANGES. This is THE time for us to change. Really.

<comment><USER40> What is a correctly enough SSR? We use react in most of our projects with server side rendering without any problems at all.

[https://github.com/ueno-llc/starter-kit](https://github.com/ueno-llc/starter- kit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I tried to use Vue 2 for a pet project but couldn't get the routing to work. It seems the router was lagging behind in versions and there were no guides on "router 2.0".

Does this version have a routing guide and production ready routing solution? That's pretty important.

<comment><USER42> We're using Vue and its router in production since 1.x, so I'm not sure where you got that impression...

<comment><USER7> I would like to know more about your use of Vue and the router in production. Tips/best case guidelines?

<comment><USER42> If you have a relatively large app and having URLs makes sense, the router is a no brainer.

No real tips; the vue-router documentation is excellent.

If you're coming from Vue 1, the only thing that did confuse me is that the router hooks have changed. The router now listens on `beforeRouteEnter` and `beforeRouteLeave` and these hooks only get triggered once per route change. Therefore, to listen to query changes on a route you need to watch the `$route` object.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Are there any migration guides from jQuery to Vue which are noteworthy?

</comment><comment><USER44> I have some projects in Mithril - is it worth it port to Vue?

<comment><USER45> Speaking only for myself, I'm sticking with Mithril.</comment></comment>


India's ambassador gets pat-down at Miss. airport - <AUTHOR> http://www.wtop.com/?sid=2193847&nid=104

<comment><USER2> Same story from the BBC three days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1988263>

No comments, no upvotes.</comment>


What's developers' general attitude towards ads? - <AUTHOR> I'm a developer who happens to do a lot of marketing simultaneously. I've been in a lot of intense debates about adblockers and how they affect publishers as well as advertisers, but also the other side, the adblocker users.
I've been in several meeting where ad tech devs were proposing all kinds of solutions, like content blocking, "encrypting" ad delivery, etc etc.
But I realize I'm talking to a very tiny niche. I wanted to ask the general dev audience who actually make cool stuff that draws the audience.. and hence the "traffic generators".
What's your take on ads? Hate it? Don't care for it? What about the people who act as middlemen (i.e. the ad networks)? What's ur attitude towards them? <comment><USER2> I don't see adverts.

Given the privacy implications, the malware and general scuzziness of the industry I just block everything.

There is an argument that none-intrusive same domain adverts are much less harmful but they get caught in the crossfire as far as I'm concerned.

As for blocking people with adblockers installed I have _zero_ issue with people doing that since I can see the logical position (why should we serve content to you if you block our adverts) but 99% of the time the content I want from you I can find elsewhere anyway so I'll just go there.

As for technical circumvention, that just invites an arms race and since I and others like me control the end device it's a losing arms race, given the flexibility of current adblockers lists I can block anything I don't want to see even if the source gets creative (I even use the adblocker to block non- advert parts of pages I don't care about - theguardian's "Comment is Free" section for example, is a waste of time and distracts from the bits I want to read).

Fundamentally the advert model for the internet is broken in that unlike other advertising mediums you require my opt-in to see the adverts (if I buy a magazine I have to buy the pages with the adverts, if I watch broadcast TV (I don't) I have to sit through the adverts, if I go to the cinema I have to sit through the interminable trailer adverts but on the internet I really don't).

<comment><AUTHOR> Very detailed explanation. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get translation done if you are outside states? - <AUTHOR>

Mechanical turk was my best bet until I discovered it only allows US companies to create tasks. <comment><USER2> MyGengo.com is an API-based play in this area. MT would have given you crap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Checking it out now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about students from your local university?

<comment><AUTHOR> Need translations in several languages (For Appstore release). I will try myGengo for now.</comment></comment>


A technologist's take on Ukraine, Venezuela, and the Arab Spring. - <AUTHOR> http://www.code-love.com/2014/03/02/a-technologists-take-on-ukraine-venezuela-and-the-arab-spring/

<comment><USER2> The US involvement in in the Ukrainian protests is completely overstated. While I do not deny that some American NGOs might have provided help, it does not change the fact that the movement is mostly indigenous and self-organized and is an expression of dissatisfaction with the status quo that's been brewing for decades.

The actual situation is like this: as protesters become more educated about events around the world, they learn from each other. From the opposite side, however, it appears that there is some organized action "behind the scenes" guiding them. Yet it may be completely not the case. It's just a matter of people growing smarter. Yes, you can blame technology on this, but then (to be consistent) you would have to go centuries back and also blame Gutenberg, the quill, stone tablets, and so on.

Usually, when I say something like this, I get a reply from someone "but but the Wikileaks showed American so-and-so discussing with so-and-so". That's completely irrelevant. The influence of the State Department is not that great (in particular when it comes to countries that are not Iraq or are otherwise vital to US interests). Whatever help US actors have provided dwindles in comparison to the kind of money that is being thrown around by kleptocratic oligarchs to maintain status quo.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the way to look at this is that America is an effective force multiplier. You can agree or disagree on the extent of its' success.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: At my wits end - <AUTHOR> I have a freelance consulting business, primarily doing mobile development. I have a lot of dev experience, but I'm having trouble making this work. My problems are prospecting, long sales cycles, estimating, and shitty clients. I've been working 10-15 hour days for months. I am tired, disheartened and burnt out.
I find I have to choose between working (earning money) or finding clients. For clients, I bumble my way around and the work trickles in. But sales cycles are long. Going from initial contact to signed contract can be months.
Fixed bids or hourly/milestone. Both require estimating, which I feel like I'm getting worse at. The unknown unknowns kill my schedules. Clients balk at huge estimates to mitigate my risk, and bitch about hourly because it creates too much risk for them.
How the fuck do you find clients? I've tried meetups, doing presentations, blog posts, linked in and it doesn't seem to make a difference. I've read tons of articles about passive value-based promotion, but I must be doing something wrong.
I've read how you're supposed to anticipate your client's needs before they do, pitch solutions and charge them according to the value. But there are a few problems. A) gotta find the clients. B) Need to figure out their problems before them. C) How to do this while you're coding?
Shitty clients: deadbeats to companies just inclined to be assholes. I have a contract that I keep updating but it's not a cure-all. You have to be willing to unleash the lawyer. It's nerve-wracking, stressful and wholly unpalatable.
Writing software is just getting harder. Most systems/frameworks have package managers, which are great. But frequent update to buggy tools and libraries, combined with the dependency cascade costs me days trying to sort shit out, then trying previous versions until something works.
Is it even possible to make more than I would at a "day job" with a freelance consultancy that has 1-3 employees without going insane? <comment><USER2> All business is non-trivial, else more people would be doing it!

I've been freelance and/or doing start-ups for ~30Y. There's always something difficult, but sometimes it at least turns into a great war story. B^>

Adding more people to the mix, unless you are a good manager or hire one, isn't likely to make things easier.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've addressed a few of the issues you're having on my freelancers blog at [https://medium.com/workroll](https://medium.com/workroll)

Here's some quick pointers...

1\. Automate your lead generation. shameless plug: [https://workroll.com](https://workroll.com)

2\. Don't estimate or provide hourly quotes. Use fixed prices based on value you're providing.

3\. I literally have a list of 100 places to find clients... [https://medium.com/workroll/find-5-freelance-design- developm...](https://medium.com/workroll/find-5-freelance-design-development- leads-every-day-985f59aa0cac)

4\. Immerse yourself in their business, ask lots of questions and find out where their problems lie. Then charge for fixing them.

5\. Contracts are useless if you can't enforce them. Learn to spot bad clients and avoid them, charge a deposit, and break work up into milestones. More here: [https://medium.com/workroll/8-red-flags-to-avoid-bad- freelan...](https://medium.com/workroll/8-red-flags-to-avoid-bad-freelance- clients-f70390f3d493)

6\. Writing software is getting easier, sorry you're just wrong on this one!

P.S. hiring a sales person won't work. You are the best sales person you can find.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Both require estimating, which I feel like I'm getting worse at. The unknown > unknowns kill my schedules.

Generally what I do is break the project down into a list of small tasks, then estimate the best possible case and the worst possible case for each. Unknowns and more people involved increase the worst case. Try to ask more questions to reduce the unknowns but after that you have to keep your worst case estimate in mind.

Why do you feel you're getting worse at it? You're always going to finish slightly above or below your estimates. If you're consistently too low though you're being too optimistic when estimating and should adjust, and/or you're not pinning down requirements enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel like I'm getting worse because some of my project surpass my worse- case. All things being equal, the project I'm thinking of involved working with new technologies.

So perhaps the lesson there is to apply an appropriate coefficient according to how well I know the technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Been there, burned out, got very corporate-sick.

Now I'm trying to break my services into highly specific niche jobs, things you can do in just 1 or 2 days: Fewer responsibilities, almost no sale cycle, fixed price, advance payments, easier to make the client happy and, most of all, the rediscovered joy of doing what we really like to do, solving problems.

You still have to market your service, but it's easier to sell since it's supposed to solve a very specific problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> I too am very interested in the kinds of niche jobs you do. Or rather how I might be able to break down what I do similarly.

<comment><USER5> Find a niche is the hardest part, indeed. Some people call it "Positioning". Well, I don't think it's useful for you what I'm currently experimenting with, I bet it's far more interesting how I found it.

I will share some thought that helped me a lot, your mileage may vary:

1) Think about something you can do really well, and that you can do in __1 day __. Look at your past proposals, find that single task where you think you can make a difference or remember that problem you solved so elegantly. The "1-day" thing is completely arbitrary but keep in mind that the shorter it is, the better chances you 'll have to test and sell it.

2) The task should be something that a fair number of people need (even if they don't know it yet). Listen to your clients, try to remember what they asked more often in your past projects. Listening and frequency are key here.

3) The task doesn't need to be anything extra innovative or super revolutionary, actually, it should be something very simple. Think small! For me, the biggest challenge was to fight my own ego. I think I'm very good in some areas of my expertise. In 10+ years of freelancing, I ran this race to the bigger project, the bigger client, the bigger challenge, the bigger reward. At some point, I had problems explaining why my solution was so much better and the best one for the client, who only wished someone solved his silly problem and didn't give a damn about it, best price aside. Remember, burn out come mostly out of frustration. I felt I was tricked into playing the wrong game. Then, I found that bigger isn't always better, many times it is just… bigger. Again, this is just me with my own story and my own experience, your situation may be different.

4) Once you find it try it out. Fast. Share it with your clients and colleagues. Make a 1-day mvp or landing page and throw some Adwords on it, leave the details for later. Don't overthink it, don't overdesign, don't over- engineering, don't over-anything, just test your idea. My rule of thumb is that if something works, it will work since day one. At least you will receive some genuine positive interest almost immediately.

Other notes:

\- You will still do freelance work on ordinary projects. Your idea will act as a bait, some clients will be very happy and will ask you to solve more of their problems. Hopefully, this time it's in your hands to choose the right project and the right client and not the other way around.

\- Again, you will also find ways to upsell more complex solutions with the right clients.

Well, I think I'll stop here, sorry, if I had more time I would have written a shorter comment. Just hope some of this will help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One word: Sub-contract.

Network with small to mid-size consulting companies. If they can trust you, it's a win-win. You 1099 with them, they make $20-$30+/hr off the top of your rate w/ no burdens of having you as an employee.

This also removes the complications of the sales side of things.

</comment><comment><USER7> A lot of what you're talking about sounds familiar. It'd be nice to talk to someone, even if just to commiserate and bounce ideas off each other.

My email is in my profile, if you're interested. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like you know what you are doing so either you're a bit unlucky or this is typical for the freelance industry.

I suspect you're not alone.

</comment><comment><USER9> Start to think of investing part of your time in building a side passive income project that can grow...

</comment><comment><USER10> For what it's worth

1, drop the hourly rate, all you do is price yourself out of work. As an example, a great programmer can do it in 1 hour, a medium programmer can do it in 2 hours, an average one can do it in 3 hours etc. So the better you are, the less you actually get paid. Obviously you can raise your prices to compensate but then people will just go to a cheaper developer and probably end up paying more without realising it. So drop the hourly rate.

2, isolate yourself from the clients, coding is fun, clients are hell. Get a sales person in to do that stuff for you.

<comment><USER7> Dropping his hourly rate will likely get him more of the kinds of clients that he does _not_ want. Your advice goes very much against the grain of what others who are very experienced in this field would say (which is to _raise your rates_ ).

What is your basis for suggesting he lower his rates?

<comment><USER11> He's not saying lower the rates. He's saying charge by the project or by the week/month, not by the hour.

<comment><USER12> I'd also suggest daily rate or weekly rate as alternatives. Seems like a better unit to bill consulting services in than hours or months. Easier to sell clients 20 days of your time or 4 weeks of your time imho. It is easier for companies to budget x days or x weeks of consulting services with fixed daily / weekly rate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Micro Soldering Microscopes - <AUTHOR> https://microsolderingsupply.com/blog/2017/07/17/micro-soldering-microscopes-everything-you-ever-needed-to-know/ <comment><USER2> They don't list it, but a critical feature of their microscope is the stereo or binocular eyepieces, which allow you to see depth. Single-eyepiece lab microscopes do not let you see how high or low the soldering iron tip is from the board!

A TL;DR:

1\. Binocular microscope to see depth.

2\. 4" or greater working distance, achieved with a Barlow lens, not <1" as on other microscopes.

3\. The best and brightest ring light you can afford.

4\. Stable mount.

Also, with regards to #3, I found their recommendation of LED ring lights odd:

> At $30/each and requiring us to keep a few in stock in case one blew, we > found that although halogen lights made it easier and clearer when examining > motherboards, the reliability, flexibility, and low operating cost of LED > lights prevailed in the end.

Surely $30 every 3-4 months is a tiny fraction of what their work is worth. I pay that without hesitation, because the light is just better. Also, the 200W heat of the halogen bulb is far away, at the end of a fiber optic cable, while the 40W of LED lights is right under my eyes and near my hands, and I have a gentle fan to move soldering fumes away so only the latter is bothersome.

<comment><USER3> I have a condition where I don't have stereoscopic vision. This poses a problem when doing fine SMD.

I am using a camera connected directly to a monitor to reduce lag. This allows me to see both the monitor and the board at the same time, without moving my head. I see the board an the tip at an angle allowing me to judge the height. When soldering, I will mostly look at the monitor and regularly scanning to see the height of the tip.

The bigger problem is with placing fine components on the board. It's just slow and irritating. I will position the component in its location and then slowly bring it down until it touches the paste.

<comment><USER4> Could it help to have a point-like light source from a good angle that gives you a sharp shadow? Then it may be possible to judge distance based on the distance between the tip and its shadow.

<comment><USER3> Haven't thought of that. I will investigate, thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was a solder monkey for a summer, and did a fair bit of soldering at university. I also have pretty marginal vision and can't even read out of my left eye without correction.

I found that with practice, you don't actually need magnification for SMT soldering. I can solder down to 0603 without magnification. I have also never used fine point irons, since I was taught how to solder SMT using a medium point. Trying to solder individual connections is a waste of time, use flux to direct the flow of solder, and desoldering braid to clean up the excess. Good lighting was my most important tool for good soldering.

On the occasions I did use magnification, I found the best tool was the big stand mounted magnifying glasses with a light ring. We had a really fancy one at university that gave you really good stereo vision using some magic.

<comment><USER6> _I found that with practice, you don 't actually need magnification for SMT soldering._

Youth is wasted on the young. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've recently moved to an eyepieceless microscope, and it's really quite an improvement over traditional stereo eyepiece microscopes. They are made for SMD work and part inspection, and generally max out at 20x (which is plenty of magnification for SMD work).

To see into the microscope, you look straight ahead into a viewing window. There's a huge margin of error for head position; you can move your head around quite a bit and still keep the image visible. Additionally, it's much less strain on your back, as you're not hunched over. Your focus distance when looking into the microscope is the same as when you glance down at the work, significantly reducing eye strain. These microscopes can also be used with glasses. (Quick summary video here[1])

One of the coolest parts of this setup is that you can actually change your 3D view of the object simply by moving your head around. You can actually "look around" the magnified object. It's hard to describe how impressive this is -- experiencing it in real life is quite astonishing.

As far as I know, there's only one eyepieceless microscope on the market: the Mantis. Buying these new[2] is very expensive ($3000, plus $500 per objective lens), due to the massive optics inside the unit. However, you can find the older models on eBay for $500, sometimes even including some objective lenses.

I recently got a cheap one from eBay that needed a bit of repair, and now have it mounted to my bench for general inspection and SMD work. If you end up going this route, I recommend replacing the MR11 halogen bulbs with LED bulbs.

Dave Jones (of EEVblog) is a big fan of this, and has a good video describing it[3].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpN83dv0f7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpN83dv0f7Q)

[2] [http://www.visioneng.us/products/stereo- microscopes/mantis-e...](http://www.visioneng.us/products/stereo- microscopes/mantis-elite-3d-eyepieceless-inspection-microscope)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3o0EWHEH08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3o0EWHEH08)

<comment><USER5> We had one of those at university. They are an order of magnitude nicer to use than a normal stereo microscope. It takes a little bit of getting used to the magnification and your hand/eye coordination, but I could happily use it for 8 hours with no pain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For hobbyists that don't use the microscope every day and don't need stereo optics, I can warmly recommend the Andonstar ADSM201 (around 160$ from China). Look on Youtube for reviews, the image quality is great and it can be connected directly to a HDMI screen!

Edit: There's also a guy on Ebay selling polarized lenses for it to get rid of reflections.

<comment><USER3> ADSM201 is nice but don't buy it! Buy ADSM302 instead ($299 from AliExpress). It is recent addition and leaps and bounds better than ADSM201.

<comment><USER8> Looks really nice, but it's also double the price. For me, the upgrade from the Andonstar A1 (40$) to the ADSM201 (160$) was definitely worth it, optical quality is massively better. But from ADSM201 (160$) to ADSM302 (300$), I'm not sure.

Also, from 300$ it's not that much more that you'd need to pay for a proper stereo microscope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminded me of this recent marco reps video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EfMRKujWAY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EfMRKujWAY)

Of which, great youtube channel to subscribe to.

</comment><comment> the-dude To solder SMD, I use a 'reading aid' from Tieman.

Example : [http://www.dlf- data.org.uk/product.php?product_id=0033982](http://www.dlf- data.org.uk/product.php?product_id=0033982)

<comment><USER10> How do you fix the misalignment in your head?

<comment> the-dude Not sure what you mean with misalignment.

<comment><USER11> That would be the "what you're looking at isn't where you're working" thing. And, like using a Wacom pad or similar device, it's really an easy thing to get used to quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have an AmScope stereo microscope. It certainly gets the job done for me. For the amount of time I spend using it, I am very happy with it and glad I didn't buy anything more expensive.

One of the PCB assembly houses I use has purchased some AmScope stereo microscopes. They use them as "backups" for their higher-quality microscopes and have them sprinkled through the plant so they'res always a microscope near by and you don't have to walk far.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have that same Amscope setup, but without the camera monocular. Working distance is key for an inspection/soldering scope; the more the better.

The ring LED is not strong enough. Go with the fiber light, though the potentiometer crapped out on mine and I had to replace it. It's not UL listed either.

Can take decent pictures just holding a camera up to the eyepiece, through lose about 1/2 the field of view.

You can get fiber LED, but those are $1500 themselves.</comment>


PG live interview (tentatively) Feb. 9th on Mixergy - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/coming-soon/

<comment><USER2> Since we've seen pg talk quite a few times, don't you think it will be more interesting to see rtm interviewed about his experience with Viaweb and YC?

<comment><USER3> Having seen PG talk in the past doesn't mean he won't be interesting this time. (I am not saying RTM won't be interesting. He will be.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's just the date I proposed. I put it on the calendar that way to hold the date till I hear back from him.</comment>


Startup Thinks It Can Solve Global Inequality With a Video Game - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/pioneer-inequality-video-game.html <comment><AUTHOR> >Each winner gets $1,000 plus a plane ticket to San Francisco

How long can you live in SF on $1000? Like 2 days? Do you get a ticket home?</comment>


Ask HN: your employer is a SOPA supporter - are you going to work today? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> List of supporters: <http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/22/list-of-sopa- supporters/></comment>


Where does the term "Red/Black Tree" come from? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/116614/2673

<comment><AUTHOR> Answer from Professor Guidas who co-authored the paper that coined the term: "we had red and black pens for drawing the trees."

I wonder how many other terms now well know in Computer Science arose from similarly coincidental (is this the right word?) reasons.</comment>


Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails  - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/ByA0DV5R <comment><USER2> Its unfortunate that they were not distributed via bittorrent and/or a tor hidden service. The files are large enough that downloading them with the "free download" option is a terribly long wait. I do not understand how this has so many upvotes after being up for such a short time. Have that many people actually downloaded the files already?

Does anyone have any guesses about the string at the end of the announcement? Is that something Anonymous normally does?

      6693b5c82009cdf9a2abf2fc80d0aeab25aa8a3a5d5d33ec24dd1c5a3038fee0b10a8460d4b3cf922ce77e2abda13ca6d3fd0c18081be3c7626587c767fb7d7b

<comment><USER3> It's not straightforward to distribute via Bittorrent anonymously.

<comment><USER2> What hurdles/risks are present in bittorrent that are not incurred when uploading to a free file hosting service? I do not think bittorrent and/or free file services provide any serious level of anonymity against a group with pockets as deep as the CoS. Let's not forget these are the people that brought down anon.penet.fi...

N.B.: I also updated my post to include using a tor hidden service. I thought I had included it originally.

From the responses I have read it seems that I should have been more clear that I was also taking censorship resistance into consideration.

<comment><USER3> Just use Tor bundle and that's it. The only way you can shoot yourself in foot is if you use flash uploader and that bypasses Tor (fortunately plugins are disabled in Tor bundle AFAIK).

Seeding via Tor? You need to configure Torrent client to use Tor, make sure it doesn't leak anything (DNS lookups, publishing to DHT or tracker, some stuff on the protocol level was a problem as well). There's nothing that comes working out of the box. Of course it's not rocket science, it's just a bit more work.

Hosting just via hidden service is actually worse than uploading to random locations on clearnet:

1) Still no way to do load balancing with hidden services

2) It's usually slower anyway

3) If your server gets compromised you're toasted, unless you use hacked servers, or buy your servers with Bitcoins or stolen CCs.

The best network for publishing that kind of leaks would be Freenet or I2P + Tahoe. But those are not nearly as popular (and secure) as Tor.

<comment><USER2> I was assuming someone from anonymous could handle figuring out how to setup tor to seed.

More importantly hosting via hidden service is not worse than uploading to depositfiles. Hidden services protects both the uploader's and the downloader's anonymity and it is much, much, much more resistant to censorship. I am not sure what "hosting gets breached" has to do with the discussion.

<comment><USER3> I guess it's not a major issue when just hosting some static content, but still if someone gets access to your server sitting behind Tor, you better make sure you don't have any activity that can tie you to that server.

This is how some people running CP sites via Tor were caught.

<comment><USER2> In order to get access to your server they need to circumvent the anonymity that tor provides. Hopefully if you go through the trouble to publish via hidden descriptors you know not to include your name/SSN/gps/cell-number in your apache headers;)

This is completely tangential, but can you point me to the Tor investigations? The interaction of tor/law-enforcement is something I am extremely interested in.

<comment><USER3> > In order to get access to your server they need to circumvent the anonymity > that tor provides.

Not necessarily, the CP sites were hacked using PHP vulnerabilities or something similar, not to mention your hosting provider could just get interested in your network activity for whatever reason.

> This is completely tangential, but can you point me to the Tor > investigations?

Nothing I have bookmarked, sorry.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for checking. Sadly the bookmarks always go missing...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only one who doesn't find this all that positive? I already think scientology is bad/evil/dangerous, and I think that illegally getting access to their secrets might make the opposition (us) look worse in the public eye. Everybody has dirty secrets, both sides, and it's a bit low to go after the other side's private emails. It'd be much easier to fight/debate against their public image, which is easy enough, without having to resort to intrusive attacks. We have the warrant system in the states for a reason, and if this were to happen in court the evidence would just get tossed right out.

Idk, am I alone here? Am I wrong? I'm open to contrary opinions.

<comment><USER5> Right with you. This is illegal, plain and simple. Acts like this should not be celebrated. No matter if it's against the 'bad' guys.

<comment><USER6> Gay Marriage is also illegal in many places, but that doesn't make it wrong.

<comment><USER7> Oh. I see. We have unjust laws, therefore, everyone should be entitled to use coercion to enforce their personal morals and ethics.

Good plan. What could possibly go wrong with it? After all, everyone capable of coercing _us_ of anything must share our morals and ethics.

<comment><USER8> I think the post you were responding to was just nit-picking the logic that illegal == immoral (or wrong). I don't see anything in that post that states what you are railing against here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some of the emails can apparently be read at [1], [2] - via [3]

[1] <http://pic.pwny.biz/x/ed_at_scientology.co.at/>

[2] <http://pic.pwny.biz/x/buchladen_at_scientology.co.at/>

[3] <http://blog.esowatch.com/?p=8247>

(in German, of course)

<comment><USER10> > (in German, of course)

That's what I would have assumed, but many of them are actually written in (mostly hilariously bad) English for some reason. They also seem to be using quite a lot of jargon, which seems to consist entirely of English words or phrases.

<comment><USER2> > They also seem to be using quite a lot of jargon

First time reading CoS material? Anything in particular? LRH was an american so it is not surprising that the domain specific jargon is english...

<comment><USER11> "domain specific jargon"

ಠ_ಠ

<comment><USER3> Loaded language is a very powerful cult tactic.

E.g. Jehovah's witnesses call their religion "the Truth" in their everyday conversations. Any kind of critical thought is equivalent then to "rejecting the Truth," which automatically substitutes critical thinking with an emotional response.

<http://www.garloff.de/kurt/sekten/mind1.html>

<comment><USER12> He meant that "domain specific jargon" is a redundant term. Jargon, by definition, is domain specific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> anyone found anything interesting in the emails? it just says they're evil, and the download's slow.

<comment><AUTHOR> that is a lot of data. i think journalists will sum it up for you, if there is something interesting.

<comment><USER2> That is a strange philosophy/view-point for HN...

<comment><USER14> Au contraire. Journalists are highly motivated to plough through the data for the scoop. ("Data scoop" is certainly an interesting development in our 21st century, btw!) I'm happy to let a highly motivated person do the ploughing, and give me the highlights, especially about a subject as marginally interesting as Scientology.

<comment><USER2> Au contraire? Respectfully, in my opinion sitting back and hoping someone else has the motivation to be inquisitive/curious is counter to the spirit of HN.

Furthermore as others have pointed out (as well as myself in another thread) CoS has deep pockets and I imagine that serves as a decent motivation for big media to not publish the incident.

<comment><USER14> I think the underlying message here is that Scientology is a lot more interesting to you than it is to me! Honestly, I care about global warming a lot more and yet I didn't take much time to sift through the "Climategate" emails in detail[1]. I also care about Linux security, and yet I've not done an audit of the kernel I'm currently running. I also care about the federal tax code, and have certainly not taken the time to analyze it for inconsistencies and unfairness.

Would you say that these decisions are "counter to the spirit of HN"?

Of course, Paul Graham started HN mainly to have intelligent, on topic discussions about technology and startup issues. And in that sense, apart from my aside about "data scoops", I _am_ probably posting contrary to the spirit of HN, since the bulk of this message and the one before it are just simple opinion expression, rather than anything more susbtantive. Heck, now that I think about it I'm tempted to delete them both!

[1][http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy) And for the record, those emails are pretty disgusting and I'm surprised and disappointed at the reaction.

<comment><USER15> From your link, "Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct" (concerning the "climategate" e-mails).

By hearing the cherry-picked quotes from those e-mails, you could get the impression that they're full of fraud, but now that the dust has settled and the investigations have been made, do you really think they're disgusting?

I think this example is counter to your point. The initial media reaction gave the complete wrong impression, and the later findings that the story is nonsense went completely unreported.

<comment><USER14> _> this example is counter to your point_

Actually, you're right! I read (some of) the original 'climategate' emails, and my opinion was quite contrary to virtually every independent committee. Those scientists were _dirty_. And clearly so.

I guess the real upshot is that "the spirit of HN" is to check original sources for stuff you _really_ care about. It's important to do so, just in case the "experts" get it wrong.

If Scientology is important to you, then check those emails!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The original download links are slow. For a torrent of the files see <http://www.demonoid.ph/files/details/2949566>

</comment><comment><USER17> I find it beautifully ironic - the statement "2.They are evil. They are dangerous. Everyone must know." from people who invaded privacy under the misguided belief they are fighting the good fight...

Two wrongs don't make a right. Grow the f*ck up - stand up instead of skulking in the shadows.

</comment><comment><USER18> [http://pic.pwny.biz.nyud.net/x/buchladen_at_scientology.co.a...](http://pic.pwny.biz.nyud.net/x/buchladen_at_scientology.co.at/00273.txt)

This is one strange email...

<comment><USER19> Strange? Someone's got a couple hundred of Euros in credit at the CoS bookstore, but should already own his full set of encyclopedias, considering that he's a Level 60 Warlock. So they're asking if he can donate that for some "charity" event about their popular "psychiatry is eeeevil" line of thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ridiculous distrobution method. Piratebay upload could have gotten this out in a few hours.

</comment><comment><USER21> This should be brought to public attention but the public don't want to have to download 2.8 gb of data and filter through it. Someone has to do that first and make it easily digestible, highlighting the worst or most 'dangerous' emails.

<comment><USER22> Journalists should do that. But I have the feeling they are happy with youtube videos nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any other mirrors online?

</comment><comment><USER24> It troubles me a tiny bit to see comments on HN like (paraphrased) "Members of [group that has different religious beliefs than me] are evil."

I am not defending religion or Scientology.

<comment><USER25> Objections to Scientology are not (for the most part) based on their religious beliefs, but their practices and behaviors. They have a history of being aggressively litigious, similar to patent trolls[1], and have used frivolous lawsuits to harass critics into giving up the fight. There are also some indications that they're emotionally abusive to their members, and encourage them to cut off all contact to non-Scientologist friends and family. These allegations are difficult to substantiate, in part because the Church is so aggressive about quelling criticism.

In general, the Intarwebs regard Scientology as an organization that invests substantial financial and legal resources in limiting free speech on the internet. This is generally unpopular, regardless of who is doing it. The Church's status as a religious institution is largely immaterial to this perception.

[1] Very similar, actually. They claim copyright on their religious writings, and use that to sue people who release them.

<comment><USER26> There is a free book online by an ex member called A Piece of Blue Sky. Once I started reading I couldn't stop.. it a very compelling story and it covers a lot of history in the broader sense (not limited to this specific member's experience). Definitely worth the read if this is something you are interested in:

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/atack/>

<comment><USER27> Thanks for posting the link... that was a fascinating and illuminating link. Bookmarked in case someone else needs it later. +1

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I still don't understand why they use this one click hoster, which have a waiting time and limited download rate instead of bittorrent. The files are large enough and I think enough people would seed it. Decentralization is an important point for such data leaks as well.

<comment><USER29> Well, anonymity over bittorrent is hard(er, at least), and that is probably the reason why the hackers didnt distribute the data in that way. But for us who didnt do the hack, distributing the files is not as bad to be caught doing.

So while the hackers release the data in an anonymus manner, we can easily create a torrent. I would be surprised if one didnt already exist, actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This mail from an Austrian police man is weird. <http://pastebin.com/PN2GFaaA> (German)

<comment><USER30> What's so weird about it? He said he's been sick over the holidays and doesn't want to continue some sort of course he apparently enrolled to

<comment><USER31> He is also hitting on the course organizer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If you think Scientology is "weirder" than mainstream religions, it's b/c you are buying into the propaganda sponsored by its competitors.

<comment><USER33> The issue people have with Scientology is not that it's "weird". It's that they are an organization created expressly as a kind of pyramid scheme designed to funnel money from its clueless members to its corrupt leaders, and that they will go great (and highly immoral) lengths to safeguard the structure of the organization.

All the weirdness -- the bogus science, the alien mythology, the extreme secrecy and protectiveness, the level hierarchy, etc. -- is merely a side effect of that goal. The mythology, for example, is the carrot, and the secrecy is the stick; they need the mythology because they need to feed some new knowledge (even if bogus) at each level, and they need the secrecy to make that knowledge desirable in the first place, both to members and to non- members.

Sure, all religions are "weird". But most religious organizations -- generally speaking -- genuinely have their members' best interests at heart. Scientology has no such concerns.

<comment><USER34> "But most religiour organization -- generally speaking -- genuinely have their members' best interests at heart."

I think that's highly dependent on whether you believe what's being preached. There's countless examples of mainstream religions exploiting their power for financial and organizational gain at the expense of individual followers. From a financial standpoint, just take a look at the Vatican City as an example of how much money has been funneled from their followers.

<comment><USER33> Apparently you missed my point. Most religious organizations have elements of corruption, sure, but Scientology as an organization is built to exploit its members _by design_.

<comment><USER34> I got your point. But again ... it depends what you believe. For argument's sake, let's assume there's no such thing as God -- then the entire basis for every religion is fraudulent and perpetuates falsehoods resulting in the manipulation of a community of people to think, act, tithe, and multiply according to the rules of that church. If all faiths happen to be incorrect, then aren't they guilty of the same sin ... perpetuating a fictional promise and manipulating a community (whether they know they're doing it or not) in an exploitive way? Or is it less bad because there's potentially a perceived positive effect on the individuals and the community?

Look, I realize debating religion online is pretty futile, and I'm no fan of Scientology or any other religion for that matter. I do get what your saying. I also have no idea what your religious views are ... but I've had a ton of debates where people seem to be blinded by how they were brought up and can only see outward from the religious views they hold as the truth. I suppose somebody could probably make that same case for my perspective on things. Personally, I think religion is introduced way before most people have the mental capacity to comprehend what's being thrust upon them, and I wonder what the religious landscape would look like if it were the kind of thing people first-experienced later on in life.

<comment><USER35> > For argument's sake, let's assume there's no such thing as God -- then the > entire basis for every religion is fraudulent

but it's not -knowingly- fraudulent, which is the major test for culpability.

<comment><USER36> Leaders of pentacostal/evangelical churches, perhaps? Are they knowingly fraudulent?

There's no way to tell if most religious leaders truly believe, unless you catch one in an incontrovertible statement of disbelief. Even someone like the Pope could be going along with it for the prestige, or simply not knowing what he'd do with his life outside of the Church.

From a non-religious perspective, either someone is brainwashed, or they are fraudulent. That distinction matters in law, but it doesn't have any bearing on the value of the religious institution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Can someone alert the relevant authorities of Germany. Yes, they may have already noticed this. But: Kann ein deutscher Sprecher mitteilen, Bundesnachrichtendienst und BfV.

[http://www.bnd.bund.de/EN/__Home/Startseite/startseite__node...](http://www.bnd.bund.de/EN/__Home/Startseite/startseite__node.html?__nnn=true)

<http://www.verfassungsschutz.de/en/index_en.html>

A least one country takes the threat seriously.

<comment><USER38> Why should German authorities be bothered with an Austrian leak?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's illegal to distribute confidential information of another __group __. This isn't about democrats or republicans. We're not talking about a group of people here. We're talking about a __religion __. If a religion has "secrets" which cannot be shared among believers and non-believers than it's not a religion - it's a sect.

<comment><USER40> I think you mean cult.</comment></comment>


Keeping dependencies fresh across dozens of Python services - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kensodev/how-we-keep-dependencies-fresh-across-45-microservices-1d526e1efce2?dup=false <comment><USER2> Interesting approach, how long does your typical feature branch live? How do you handle conflicts between N feature branches running in parallel and possibly wanting to release in an unknown order or at an unknown future time?

What I've seen on a lot of projects is freezing the deps _forever_ and because of this, any package upgrades can cause a bunch of problems, so they're avoided.

I've come to is freezing the deps using pip-compile, doing incremental updates as-needed, and doing a full update every quarter or two. We have a lot of short-lived branches and being on python 2.7, the libs aren't changing a whole lot anymore, so this seems to be about the right cadence for us.</comment>