Whiteboard exercises are a terrible way to investigate coding ability (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.exratione.com/2012/09/whiteboard-exercises-are-a-terrible-way-to-investigate-coding-ability/ <comment><USER2> I don't see the problem with whiteboard as long as its emphasized that you are looking for an algorithmic solution, not a perfectly running code snippet in a specific language. Whiteboard is great for sketching out ideas and solving problems collaboratively, which is a good indicator of team fit.

<comment><USER3> Exactly right. I think a lot of people stress that a whiteboard exercise is not a great way to ascertain coding skill.... and they're right. The part they're missing is the whiteboard exercise isn't intended to _only_ test coding skill.

It's about how well you ask questions, how well you listen to instructions, how well you work with others and interpret the specs and information you're given. Then it's about how well you adapt to changing or incomplete requirements, and how well you can explain yourself and your thought process.

Like so many tests in life it's not about the "answer", it's about the process you used to get there.

<comment><USER4> In practice, facing down some 25 year old who's been at the company for all of 9 months, it is all about "the answer." In some cases, it's about 3 answers. Often, it's actually about _their_ answer — you must do it their way, otherwise you are wrong.

This is not the case 100% of the time, but it is often enough that if you're interviewing in SF, particularly at startups, you will see it at least every few interviews. It's ridiculous.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't sound like a place anyone would want to work at anyway.

That's the great thing about an on-site interview, the evaluation goes both way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Programming on a projector is the stuff nightmares are made of... but it still beats a whiteboard.

Anyway, I don't think those boards are there to investigate ability. They are basically useless for that. If they have a rational motive at all, it's probably because the most strict schools teach the "assemble everything in your head, then write it" method, so they accidentally select people with good credentials.

<comment><USER6> How about: bring a laptop with an HDMI port (or adapter) and a dev environment for "whiteboard" and "napkin" problems.

I'd be OK with an Interview like that, just don't laugh about the fact that my laptop is a still functional but otherwise aging smart terminal for securely connecting to my real workstations when I'm somewhere I don't trust.

<comment><USER5> It's not the setup that is bad, it's how there are a lot of people focused on your code, noticing your typos before you do.

It's bad enough when you are in a position of power like in a presentation or a class. It's nearly unthinkable when you are in a position of weakness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm an anomaly. I like whiteboard algorithm tests. I do still think it is kinda a waste of time doing Leetcode over and over like what I'm doing right now, but hear me out.

An even more waste of time is actually learning framework A, B, C, D, database A, B, C, D, bundler A, B, C, D.

The more and more I think about it, as a fullstack developer, I continuously forget documentations and how a specific technology works, but I was always able to solve problems using those in the past. I did Angular, Vue, jQuery, React, Webpack 1, 2, 3, 4, Grunt, Gulp. I did MongoDB, MySQL, S3, DynamoDB, Go, Python. Those things change all the time and I always forget how they worked. Because I genuinely like fullstack development I always switch back and forth between different technologies and I can't remember them all.

Whenever a company interview me, I'd really appreciate it if they just ask whiteboard algorithm questions instead, at the very least I don't have to scramble brushing up X if I got interviewed as an X developer. At least whiteboard algorithm and data structures questions make me stronger fundamentally as an all around developer and I just need to grind those. And after a while, grinding those aren't that difficult anymore.

P.S. I still failed FAANG interview, but I still keep grinding Leetcode. I am definitely a believer in whiteboard algorithm and data structure questions. It is simple, to the point, saves everyone time. If I were an interviewer I would also ask data structures and algorithm questions instead of nitty bitty of React hooks or Javascript promises or Golang's concurrency pattern. Those things can be learned easily if you are a decent all around developer.

I'm an average developer. I don't have the creative capability or the insights that 10x programmer has. Those people are not only good with programming, but also at mentoring, at business, at finance, at swimming, at hunting bears, at predicting the future, etc. So, in my resume I often don't have those quantitative accomplishment "implement X in Y minutes that resulted in Z performance and A savings for the company". So, whiteboard algorithm questions fits me better.

<comment><USER8> I had this problem with switching contexts. For work, we use a combination of old Java, Tomcat, JS and the likes. For my hobby, I mainly program games in C#. Two entirely different infrastructures. That said, I can keep both up decently well due to the sheer volume of practice.

A few months ago I had my first go at ASP.NET Core, specifically Razor. Hadn't touched it for months, now I'm trying it again and I already forget intricacies of the syntax (when to put curly braces etc.), all stuff you only really remember through continued practice. Most of all: its just knowledge you can find on the internet. The case isn't unique enough to not have a creative solution or find a source on. In fact, the information is so easy to find, its almost a waste of brain space to remember rather than figuring out the pattern to uncover the solution next time.

I also find webdev to be more and more complex by the year. Not because of the frameworks introduced, but due to the increasing demands from users, the competition and security issues, while there's still very little to streamline the process for the developer. It takes a lot of steps to get to the point where your site is online, with certified security, connected to a domain instead of an IPaddress, coming as someone who primarily did desktop development.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, switching context is fine and I think decent developer should be able to do it within first two weeks of ramping up. That's why I think it is a waste of time to go and learn the nitty gritty of all these platforms just for the sake of job interviews. Unless that skill is highly specialized like OpenGL/Vulkan API developer or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article says that whiteboard tests are about whiteboard tests.

Ultimately, pen and paper tests are about pen and paper tests. Take-home tests are about take-home tests. Algorithm tests are about algorithm tests, and chess tests are about chess tests. But among these, I would argue that the whiteboard is better at facilitating general communication.

If you have anything to say about anything, whiteboards are the most flexible way to say it. What ends up on the whiteboard doesn't have to be some toy problem, it can be about anything. It's probably one of the most flexible programming languages in the world, because you use a combination of words, arrows, and drawings to communicate however you want, and your ideas don't even have to make sense.

<comment><USER10> It's great if that's how you're being scored, but you never know how you're being scored. One interviewer might be happy with a conceptual approach, another one might reject you for leaving off a curly brace.

<comment><USER11> In my experience some interviewers were not happy that I worked on a brute force solution first, with the aim to optimize it after I got it working. They wanted to see the efficient, optimized solution first. That is counter to everything I read before doing these interviews, and it was, I think, a bit unreasonable.

<comment><USER12> As much of a cesspool of anonymous gossip as places like Glassdoor might be, reporting this sort of bad behavior might be useful, if to at least force companies that engage in unreasonable behavior to grapple with these poor policies. Or to warn other candidates of what they're in for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a much bigger fan of telling someone they have 24h to build me a toy deliverable to test how well they can work under pressure and scrape code together. That gives you a better understanding of how well they can do that on the spot just make sure to have then walk through the code the next day so you know they actually wrote it

</comment><comment><USER14> White/Chalk board coding makes sense in a computational world that uses punch cards and has a 24 hour turnaround on output.

</comment><comment><USER15> Whiteboard exercises are there to show how well you understood topics, how well you can think on your feet and how well you can communicate. Most whiteboard exercises generally deal with pseudocode. Haven't seen a whiteboard that can compile and run the code you write on it to test your code or your coding ability.

</comment><comment><USER16> Surely this can be tested fairly easily by seeing how well whiteboard test results correlate with coding ability or developer effectiveness more generally. I'd assume businesses that hire a lot of developers have the data to know whether whiteboard tests are useful for achieving their hiring goals.

</comment><comment><USER17> I like doing real work on a whiteboard. Especially if there's two or more devs involved. It's a great way to see the whole problem at once, and it's so much more productive than all sitting at a keyboard together.

So a whiteboard is a pretty natural medium for interviewing for me.

</comment><comment><USER18> I organically discovered this many years ago when attempting to learn my first recursive algorithm by writing out its final result step-by-step on a whiteboard. Definitely went through more than one marker.

</comment><comment><USER19> Try doing whiteboard exercises over video conferencing for even more fun.

<comment><USER20> Amazon does this. My experience was terrible. I don't mind whiteboarding if they don't care about specifics, and are open to talking about process and ideas, versus strict syntax.

<comment><USER19> It can work if both participants have styluses with their tablets (iPad Pro is best) and they use something like google Jamboard. For coding exercises, use alongside code road running on your laptop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Being good at coding can be predicted by IQ.

Being good at white boarding puzzles require IQ.

\-----> White board puzzles filter for good coders.

Its not perfect, but its the best way to scale it. Sorry everyone, this isn't going away

<comment><USER22> > Its not perfect, but its the best way to scale it.

IQ tests scale a lot better than one-to-one whiteboard interviews do. They are specifically designed for that purpose.

How is an expensive, labor-intensive, never-validated approximation of an IQ test "better scaled" than a cheap, easy-to-administer, thoroughly validated IQ test?

<comment><USER21> Right, but IQ tests are illegal.

<comment><USER22> There are legal barriers, but no, they're not illegal. GE uses one. The NFL uses one. McKinsey uses one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Road to Luna - <AUTHOR> http://elementaryos.org/journal/the-road-to-luna

<comment><USER2> As much as it brightens my day to see a project I worked on (I'm actually the guy who filmed that video in the article) make it to HN's front page, it also makes me sad a bit.

It makes me sad because of the usual troupe of folks who complain that we don't have the right to go around calling ourselves an "OS", we don't bring anything original or innovative into the world, or that we are plainly just OS X clones.

I was extremely active on the thread[0] posted to HN when Luna launched (which was at #1 for the better part of that evening), but I don't think I'm going to do that same level of in depth responding here.

Instead, I'm simply going to leave you a link to the below article[0]. Please read my comment if you want to understand how we as elementary evaluate and understand our design process and the criticism which seems to come with it.

Thanks for listening.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6193148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6193148)

<comment><USER3> I can't imagine that people making those silly comments have 1) RTFA, or 2) done anything remotely like what you guys are doing. You guys are doing some amazing things with the Linux desktop, don't let the peanut gallery get you down.

PS - I fervently hate the word "exciting" and think it is by far the most overused and diluted word in contemporary US English these days, at least in the business and startup realm. Too many people seem to think that calling something "exciting" actually makes it so, and call everything they want investment or traction for "exciting". Almost none of it actually is.

eOS is one of the few exceptions. The first project I've seen where reading your blog posts about it feels like reading folklore.org, and for a Linux fan at least, truly is exciting. So please keep doing what you're doing, ignore the negative nancies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lot of people here fervently complaining about eOS again.

The most important thing is that there's finally a linux distro with a team behind it that really cares about design. I think it's a huge step forward, and when eOS gains in popularity, I hope other teams follow in their footsteps.

No, distros like Linux Mint aren't the right way forward. Stripping off everything until what you have left is a taskbar isn't exactly my idea of good design.

<comment><USER5> They don't care about design. If they did they would have created something original. Or at least they would have more than one source of inspiration to pick from. If they wanted to take the whole shape of OSX applications, at least they should have picked a different color theme. Here they stole the functionalities, the shapes, the colors and the metal textures that Apple's designers chose. eOS is designed by Apple, there's no one who care about design in the eOS team, at least not for the apps shown in the video. They're receiving bad critics because thieves receive bad critics. Hopefully they'll learn and their next version will have its own identity.

<comment><USER3> Apple doesn't care about design. If they did they would have created something original. Here they stole their entire windowing interface from Xerox and their kernel from FreeBSD and Mach. OS X is designed by other people, Apple only cares about metallic textures. They're receiving bad critics because ... oh wait, they're not b/c Steve's said "great artists steal" and made it all ok.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why do you guys make a big deal of Contractor in the article when actual development of the service is rather neglected looking at your milestones for your next release's beta[0] and Contractor's revision history[1]?

On your mailing list you guys are already getting ready to update your Ubuntu Precise base to a more recent release[2], but why? Precise is stable and will be continue to be so long enough for you guys to spend time developing the developer-facing treasures of your platform, and yet it seems you're a little too focused on user-facing niceties. Or maybe the better question is when will you guys sit down and start making the stuff that'll entice third-party developers?

Let me know if I'm getting things confused, I'm actually a big fan of the project.

[0]: [https://launchpad.net/elementaryos/+milestone/isis- beta1](https://launchpad.net/elementaryos/+milestone/isis-beta1)

[1]: [http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~contractor- dev/contractor/trunk...](http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~contractor- dev/contractor/trunk/changes)

[2]: [https://lists.launchpad.net/elementary-dev- community/msg0257...](https://lists.launchpad.net/elementary-dev- community/msg02577.html)

<comment><USER7> Hi, I'm one of the devs.

Regarding Contractor, its big proponent is on vacations and we still need to move some of the blueprints about it to the appropriated milestones. In fact, we still have to report many bugs about it, but in time I'm sure it'll be done.

Regarding the new release, we get a lot of criticism from all kinds of users saying they want us to be based on a more modern version of Ubuntu and as so, we plan to be based on 14.04 for next release. We aim to release shortly after Ubuntu 14.04 comes out and that's the plan we're sticking to. I'm sure 14.04 will be just as stable, we can't be stuck in the past and moving is a lot of work - we need to start working on it as soon as possible!

Besides, we also need many new GTK+, Vala and other libraries' features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the idea of a new competitor in this space, however I was a bit disappointed in their direction. Not sure of others but I don't need another gnome3-like (dumbed-down, grandma-friendly, immature paradigm, rather be a tablet) interface. These linux-based desktops will never be popular; that ship sailed long ago.

However, I desperately need a professional, stable, feature-complete, mostly bug-free workstation GUI with modern capabilities at least as good as Win2000/XP, Irix, NeXT like I had 10+ years ago.

Something like Xfce polished to OSX-level quality.

If one of the design-goals is that "menus are too difficult" there is no market available for that product. The people that would benefit use Windows, OSX, iOS, and Android already.

<comment><USER9> It seems like KDE already handles your needs: it's well-integrated, stable and has all the modern capabilities you could want. Certainly far better than XP! I've used KDE a fair bit, and the recent versions have been superb. Sure, it's heavyweight compared to some of its bare-bones competitors, but that's the only way to fulfill all your conditions.

Of course, the truly "professional" choice would be XMonad layered over something minimal. But that's a different discussion for a different time :P.

<comment><USER8> It would seem so. Unfortunately, I've given it a try every other year and have been disgusted every time. The technology is nice, but it feels like it was designed by 90's IT guy. Clutter and programmer-art is not what I am looking for either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> sickening to see the negativity here, I just bought a copy because this thing looks great and because I want to support the team.

</comment><comment><USER11> Even though the comparisions to OS X seem inevitable due to the launch bar, I like the snappiness of the OS, and one of the few distros I felt playing around. I am a primary windows user, who tinkers and plays around with Linux and OS X, I definitely like the OS. My wireless drivers being proprietary could not work with Luna, so as much as I want to have Luna - I could not use on the old laptop, but I will definitely consider installing it on my VM.

Crunchbang and Luna are the distros I am liking.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's a really cool OS. The only thing I don't like is that they force their own applications. I always install Firefox and Thunderbird, and then it's a real thing.

<comment><USER13> So installing something by default is forcing it on people now? It's still Linux.

<comment><USER14> > So installing something by default is forcing it on people now?

Only for Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Elementary OS looks like a OS X knock off. Which is a shame, in my opinion. They say they reached the same conclusion as Apple's designers, but I think they just have a bias. They should be taking inspiration from apps like Fantastical, Soulver, etc. and building in those concepts to the O.S. They should try and set themselves apart from OS X. It just looks too similar. Remember what Picasa said: "Good artist copy. Great artist steal." Elementary OS is just copying. They should be stealing. I'd love to see something along the lines of this Dribbble shot, honestly.

[http://dribbble.com/shots/576250-Windows-UI- Concept/attachme...](http://dribbble.com/shots/576250-Windows-UI- Concept/attachments/44311)

<comment><USER16> While I agree with your premise that Elementary is nothing more than a repetitive clone of a well trodden trope, I could not disagree more with the "steal" aspect.

Instead, I would suggest that any further designs should drop the privileged terms of "intuitive" and other such rubbish[1] and instead focus on designing a system that specifically meets the needs of a very particular demographic / audience.

Finally, there is little to no evidence to suggest that Picasso said that infamous line. It was likely misattributed by Mr. Jobs from a biography.

It is instead a mangling of the words of T.S. Eliot[2] that seriously detracts from Eliot's original (and relevant to this discourse) intention.

[1] [http://www.uigarden.net/english/easy-intuitive-and- metaphor](http://www.uigarden.net/english/easy-intuitive-and-metaphor) [2] [http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets- borro...](http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borrow-great- poets-steal/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For those saying Elementary OS isn't a blatant copy of OS X. Just look at those icons in the dock.

<comment><USER3> "Good artists copy, great artists steal." So by Steve Jobs (and Picasso's) own definition, the eOS guys are merely good, not yet great. They've still got some catching up to do.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU)

<comment><USER18> That quote isn't actually Picasso's. It's T.S. Eliot's, and it goes, "Good poets borrow, great poets steal."

<comment><USER19> That's not quite what Eliot said either. From elsewhere in this thread, 'foolrush points to this:

[http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets- borro...](http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/good-poets-borrow-great- poets-steal/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I emailed support a question and never received a reply back. Using Geary, once deleted/archived, emails almost always come back. Sometimes, they come back after several attempts.

<comment><USER2> Hi, I'm on the elementary team.

I'm not sure how exactly you "emailed support" because we don't have a support email address, but I would encourage you to check out our support landing page here: [http://elementaryos.org/support](http://elementaryos.org/support) and specifically search/ask a question here: [http://elementaryos.org/answers/+/all/solved/highest](http://elementaryos.org/answers/+/all/solved/highest)

If nobody seems to have a conclusive answer for you (mind you, Geary is not an app we wrote in house, so there's liable to be less Geary developers hanging around our support channels), I'd ask you (on behalf of the community) to report a bug here: [https://bugs.launchpad.net/geary](https://bugs.launchpad.net/geary)

Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How can they name their mostly visual customizations of the existing projects "OS" and be accepted as serious? Such things were called skins and themes.

What is really original there apart from the visual design elements and the UI customizations to allow them calling their contribution an "OS"? Just that they actually write some code? Where are their own kernel and their own drivers? Aren't they just one more derivative GNU/Linux distro?

<comment><USER2> So by that characterization, virtally no GNU/Linux distro is actually worthy of being called an OS.

That's fine if you want to say that, but you have to understand what that actually means.

As for differences beyond the "visual", we wrote our entire desktop environment and a number of our apps from scratch. We did't just skin things and make opinionated decisions about design. We actually write code (apps, libraries, our DE), as this article expresses.

Full disclosure: I am an elementary team member and I helped edit the linked article.

<comment><USER21> _By that characterization, virtally no GNU /Linux distro is actually worthy of being called an OS._

Exactly, it isn't. Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, they are all distros. The real OSes are Unix, VMS, Plan 9, BeOS, Minix, Windows, GNU/Linux, BSD, OSX and Android.

Making some user space applications or libraries don't make you OS authors. And I don't understand why you guys are hurt when I say that. And why you are not open about what you're actually doing.

Maintaining a distro is not a small thing though, so I'd like to see how serious you are in that aspects. What are your upstreams? What are your release policies and schedules? Update schedules? Verifications? Quality assurance? How many people do you have in charge of all that?

I see you've had one release which you call yourself "Ubuntu 10.10 remaster," and now you prepare for second based on... what? I see you make your own patches of Nautilus. Once you accept you're a distribution you can be realistically compared to others.

<comment><USER22> "Ubuntu: The world's most popular free OS" [http://www.ubuntu.com/](http://www.ubuntu.com/)

"Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer." [http://www.debian.com/](http://www.debian.com/)

<comment><USER21> It's like calling the specific desktop computer "a CPU." Some people do this too. It's just wrong. If I plug the pieces together in a workable machine it doesn't mean I've made a CPU, even if I've painted the box myself.

Note the name is Ubuntu, not "Ubuntu OS." Debian and not "Debian OS."

I wouldn't have problem if the product is just named "Elementary" and described as a Linux based OS distribution, once they have a release policy (before it's just a Linux based release). Having OS in the name means a new OS, and it simply and plainly isn't.

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure I agree.

I could be said that "Windows", "OSX", "GNU/Linux" are not really "Operating Systems", intended as software products that you can install on a machine.

Windows XP, OSX Mountain Lion, Ubuntu 13.04 and yes, Elementary, are.

You don't download a specific "GNU/Linux" OS, you download an OS (intended as a software product made up of kernel+file system+desktop environment) that is based on that technology. The word "distribution" is something that was created for Linux given its specific nature.

Yes, if we stick to the classic CS definition of OS maybe you are right, but I believe that Ubuntu, Debian and Elementary can rightfully call themselves "OS"s without issue.

<comment><USER21> Windows XP, OSX Mountain Lion, Ubuntu 13.04 are all specific releases, not the new operating systems.

Elementary isn't, too. It is not even a distro until it has clear release and update policies.

Otherwise you'd consider any skinned ISO of any existing OS a new OS, and that's just wrong. "Hello all, I'm making one new OS in my basement every week!"

<comment><USER23> From Wikipedia[1]:

> a distribution is most simply described as a particular assortment of > applications installed on top of a set of libraries married with a version > of the kernel, such that its "out-of-the-box" capabilities meet most of the > needs of its particular end-user base.

It seems you're just making up random criteria that elementary OS doesn't meet so you can dismiss it for what it is: an operating system.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What Free IDE do you use for WebDev? - <AUTHOR>

Sublimetext is not free and not opensource. Is there any opensource IDE for Linux or Windows 7(efficient IDE like sublimetext)?<p>Thanks! :) <comment><USER2> [http://brackets.io/?lang=en](http://brackets.io/?lang=en)

</comment><comment><USER3> Komodo Edit ([http://komodoide.com/komodo-edit/](http://komodoide.com/komodo- edit/)).

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't see it mentioned much but Aptana Studio is a strong IDE. You could think of it as a distribution of Eclipse.

</comment><comment><USER5> Atom (available at Atom.io). Free and excellent.

</comment><comment><USER6> LightTable

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://limetext.org/](http://limetext.org/)

[http://notepad-plus-plus.org/](http://notepad-plus-plus.org/)

If you want a WYSIWYG type Frontpage alternative: [http://bluegriffon.org/](http://bluegriffon.org/)</comment>


Python 4.0 Confirmed in 3.7 Documentation - <AUTHOR> https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.7.html <comment><AUTHOR> > Since this change breaks compatibility, the new behavior needs to be enabled > on a per-module basis in Python 3.7 using a __future__ import:

      from __future__ import annotations

> It will become the default in Python 4.0.</comment>


Google is trying to kill web URLs - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/drybones_5/status/1190694123965210625 <comment><USER2> Full URLs were made invisible in Safari years ago. Of course, the first thing I did when saw this was make them visible back. Luckily, there still was an option for this. As this trend intensifies, it is probable that this option will be gone one day.

</comment><comment><USER3> They are also killing all other tools with which users can control their browser.

For example, the new Manifest V3 was created with the intention of making true ad-blocking impossible.

Google today is just evil and plainly manipulative.

Google is now just like Facebook.</comment>


Why Gang Members Make Wicked Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/15/keen-on-why-gang-members-make-wicked-entrepreneurs-tctv/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

<comment><AUTHOR> I asked someone who is actually a gang member and he thinks this guy is fake. Wonder what his affiliation was.

Problem is these days you could go to up to anyone and say you're from a gang too and now you're an entrepreneur. Everyone would be like "oh my god, you're amazing" because they know no better. Makes a great story, gets published. But then no one would know how or care enough to track down whether or not you were lying or not.

Point is, someone should check on his story and actually verify it.</comment>


A timeless Twitter Bootstrap theme built for the modern web - <AUTHOR> http://code.divshot.com/geo-bootstrap/ <comment><USER2> I'm an old fart, this is modern to me: [http://kristopolous.github.io/BOOTSTRA.386/](http://kristopolous.github.io/BOOTSTRA.386/)

<comment><USER3> Gah! That should come with a flashback warning.

Or at least report linker errors... #BorlandTurboC++

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having grown up in Brooklyn in late 60s, early 70s, I would call this the old 42nd Street, and modern web design the new 42nd Street.

Sure the new stuff is clean and functional, but it's missing some of the color or character. I'd love to see a mashup of both!

</comment><comment><USER5> Needs more Metallica midi auto-playing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL9qdhRkcbk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL9qdhRkcbk)

</comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one that wishes the pendulum of fashion would swing back to the time when a site expressed its character, rather than its money funnels?

</comment><comment><USER7> My 5-year-old son says: "It looks cool to me!"

</comment><comment><USER8> No flaming skulls. _closes tab_

<comment><USER9> You didn't like the flaming input boxes?

<comment><USER10> Frankly, I think we need MOAR flaming input boxes as a clear indication that someone, somewhere, probably a user, has done something incredibly wrong.

Like, broken-the-universe wrong.

Seeing a flaming input box should leave the user crying out in despair, begging the cosmos to forgive them for whatever unholy thing they did.

And the galactic expanse will uncaringly not reply in the slightest.

It would be metal.

\---

Yes, it's a useless response. I gave my brain the day off today, mostly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sometimes I think clients want that kind of styling. In the future I'm going to have to show them this site and ask if they can identify what they like about it.

</comment><comment><USER12> The fire input error state is A+

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh my...Just wow...

Also, I'm not sure if the Guestbook[0] is intentionally spent our it just ended up like that.

[0]-[http://www.websitegoodies.com/guestbook.php?a=view&id=930308](http://www.websitegoodies.com/guestbook.php?a=view&id=930308)

</comment><comment><USER13> Definitely the best article title relative to the content, well done! Happy memories, too.

</comment><comment><USER14> The Drudge siren in the alert box is an especially nice touch.

</comment><comment><USER15> Haven't laughed so hard in a long time.

The "Made with notepad: THE RIGHT WAY" and other spurious badges just added that extra touch of realism to the theme

</comment><comment><USER16> I love that it's responsive :-)

</comment><comment><USER17> The alerts need thicker borders! A good rule of thumb is > 3 pixels, preferably gold.

</comment><comment><USER18> both awesome and horrific at the same time

</comment><comment><USER19> Smile. Laugh. Cry. Bookmark. Smile

</comment><comment><USER20> MY EYES

</comment><comment><USER21> Triggered.

</comment><comment><USER22> I was taken aback.

</comment><comment><USER23> No java games?

</comment><comment><USER24> On point.

</comment><comment><USER25> my eyes my beautiful eyes

</comment><comment><USER19> Bookmarked

</comment><comment><USER26> For people living on the cutting edge of the web, here's a Bootstrap 3 version:

[https://github.com/abcarroll/geo3-bootstrap](https://github.com/abcarroll/geo3-bootstrap)

</comment><comment><USER27> Lol my favorite part was the fire in the text box when there's an error

</comment><comment><USER28> Sheesh, this looks like a collection of the worst 1990s styling elements.

<comment><USER29> No heavy JS framework sucking the battery dry, no full screen ads, no annoying popovers, no scrolljacking, no requests for notification, no newsletter subscription.

A collection of the worst of the current web would be much worse.</comment></comment>


Zero-downtime restarts in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rcrowley/goagain

<comment><USER2> We used this for a while at Braintree. It works great for Unicorn-style restarts, but it doesn't ensure that the server shuts down gracefully.

So while you'll have uninterrupted connectivity, if you don't ensure that your server shuts down gracefully, you'll still drop the requests that the old process is servicing when the restart is triggered. We wrote a library called manners for managing the graceful shutdown of a single server: <https://github.com/braintree/manners>. When used in conjunction with manners, GoAgain provides zero-downtime restarts without any dropped requests.

(Manners is still under development, so make sure you understand it before using it.)

We had an interesting experience with Go. We ended up deciding the language was not a great fit for our needs right now, in part because the community is still pretty immature. (You can read about our experiences here: [https://braintreepayments.com/braintrust/gotchas- irritants-a...](https://braintreepayments.com/braintrust/gotchas-irritants- and-warts-in-go-web-development)).

Still -- as more and more libraries like this get released and stabilized, Go will become an increasingly interesting option for developers.

<comment><USER3> Go is only ever going to be as useful as the community works towards making it useful. We are trying our best to implement all the boilerplate code and solve all of Go's short comings.

Go is a very young programming language and unfortunately there are alot of cases where we have to implement pkg foo, bar, baz, because pkg quux depends on them. There are going to be many places where things break at this stage in Go's life, however that shouldnt discourage using Go for real world projects, because many of yesterday's bug end up being debugged and patched today. Go is a great investment for your company, and I hope you and your team reconsider using go for your projects after go 1.1 comes out. <http://tip.golang.org/doc/go1.1>

If you guys need help, feel free to join us in #go-nuts on freenode's irc server. IMHO, The best feature of go is, arguably, the helpful evangelist-like gopher community hanging out in IRC. We wouldnt mind helping you guys with your issues, but you have to help us help you.

<comment><USER4> I don't think this is a reasonable demand for startups or even medium sized businesses.

Libraries cost time and money to produce, and if you are relying on free volunteers, development will either be slow or buggy and likely both.

I remember when I tried to look into a MySQL library last month. The first one I tried wouldn't even compile. The 2nd one threw a connection error not when I issued the dial function, but when I tried a query on a fake IP.

If you want Go to succeed, get Google to start funding it more or get used to having it grow organically like every other language.

<comment><USER5> I'm curious if we can draw any comparisons to what Google is doing with Go and what Sun Microsystems did with Java, as far as a corporation supporting development of a language goes?

How many resources did Sun allocate to developing and supporting Java?

EDIT: One of the things that excites me about Go as opposed to something like Ruby on Rails or node.js (V8, aside) is that Google is behind it.

<comment><USER6> Sun pushed Java for everything and everyone one. Go was built to solve problems at Google. If they solve your problem, cool, but that isn't (or wasn't) the goal.

<comment><USER3> Go was built to solve problems like the ones faced at google. However, go can solve just about any theoretical computational problem C can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I run 3 websites written in Go ([http://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/uvw2/Thoughts-on-Go- after...](http://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/uvw2/Thoughts-on-Go-after- writing-3-websites.html))

Those are clearly not Facebook scale servers but for majority of people: you don't need this or any other such solution.

Here's what I do for deployment. I have a fabric script that:

\- copies the new executable to the server \- kills currently running executable \- starts the new executable

The worst that can happen is that a few connections will get dropped and that's perfectly fine 99.9% of websites. You don't control internet so the users will get broken connections all the time for reasons you can't eliminate. They shrug and hit reload button.

Complicating things to avoid few seconds of downtime was not worth it for me and rationally, probably not worth it for most.

<comment><USER4> If you are running a paid app or making rapid changes your users will notice.

<comment><USER8> In these cases hopefully your business is real enough to be able to afford a load balancer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you deployed Go in production, I'd love reading about that since I'm having a closer look at it now (coming from Ruby). Is there a more widely used option currently?

<comment><USER10> Unless you are a committer to Ruby now, or plan to invest in learning more powerful languages, Go probably isn't a good choice. I run a pure Go shop and we generally look for people with hardcore C (not C++ or C#) or systems/kernel backgrounds or at least one open source Go library under their belt.

If you're just looking for another language to get away from the cesspit that is Ruby, try Python.

<comment><USER9> Do you mean you believe that people using Ruby are either Ruby committers, or people with only pure Ruby experience?

If this is true, I think you'll miss some great candidates, to be honest.

Things I did before, for instance, include:

\- writing real-time 2D/3D rendering engines, mixing C++, TurboPascal, Asm

\- low-level assembly code, writing keyboard hardware interrupt handlers, TSR, video-cards tweaking etc

\- porting C-libraries from Solaris to Windows

\- writing a full GUI toolkit

\- writing 2D games

\- wrapping C and C++ libraries into .Net

\- writing a cluster of satellite images processing with PVM

Etc (apart from using Java, .Net, Ruby, CoffeeScript etc).

To make my point clear: the good rubyists I know have a _lot_ of past experience, similar to this.

Talking about "cesspit" is not giving good signals about how you consider other technical choices, either :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I built something similar which additionally provides graceful termination of established connections as well as systemd socket activation to (optionally) provide lazy startup of servers: <https://github.com/daaku/go.grace>

</comment><comment><USER12> The documentation is very light so I had a look through the source code. Is the purpose of this to remotely restart a go app (that presumably has been updated and deployed) via TCP whilst keeping the TCP connection alive, or is there more to it?

</comment><comment><USER13> Cool, it seems like this package might work very well with this one: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5443107>

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder how long it will be before Go gets "enough" of Erlang to make it a suitable replacement for most people who need/want the Erlang goodies.

<comment><USER15> There appear to be some philosophical differences that mean this won't occur.

Specifically the "let it fail" aspect of OTP, which begets supervisor hierarchies and the consequent lack of exception handling required.

This has been brought up before and dismissed (not the unix way perhaps? I forget), and supervisors have been implemented in go by others from Erlang backgrounds. It's just not quite the same as being built in.

The way goroutines are not linked to their parents or children is related to this. It's a conscious design decision, but I am still adjusting my style to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What novel concept :P</comment>


Ask HN: What are some podcasts you listen to? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> [http://bootstrappedwithkids.com](http://bootstrappedwithkids.com)

[http://startupsfortherestofus.com](http://startupsfortherestofus.com)

[http://mixergy.com](http://mixergy.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> First and foremost, dancarlin.com for both his political and history podcasts. If you have not heard any of his history podcasts, please give it a listen.

Next would be Marc Maron at wtfpod.com and the occassional Kevin Smith smodcast. Really liking the new Fraiser podcast he is doing with Matt Mira

Dead Robot Society and Narrative Breakdown, because I do a lot of writing

And of course my podcast I do with 2 friends on writing and technology, typehammer.com

Yes, there are no programming podcasts listed. I guessed that is what you may have been looking for, and if so, sorry.

<comment><USER4> Seconded Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. It is awesome. He is an amazing storyteller and makes history come to life in a way that is fascinating and very approachable.

I've walked many, many miles with Dan Carlin in my ear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Long time listener of Big Picture Science[1]. Lately also enjoying not so frequently updated TTL podcast[2] (the latest episode with boki beran of Intuit was quite enlightening.

[1] [http://www.bigpicturescience.org/](http://www.bigpicturescience.org/) [2] [http://ttlpodcast.com/](http://ttlpodcast.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> for those of you who like history and can understand spanish, I really like "ser historia con nacho ares" its always got interesting subject matter and is really well put together. [http://www.nachoares.com/seccion/ser- historia/](http://www.nachoares.com/seccion/ser-historia/)

For literature, I like BBC 4 Open Book, its a pretty good way for me to find new books and authors to read: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrsfl/episodes/downloads](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrsfl/episodes/downloads)

Another one thats short and sweet for language enthusiast is "sozusagen!" auf BR2. (German though) [http://www.br.de/radio/bayern2/kultur/sozusagen/sozusagen112...](http://www.br.de/radio/bayern2/kultur/sozusagen/sozusagen112.html).

Those are the only ones that have stuck with me over the years and continually delivered good content for stuff I'm interested in.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Bugle: [http://thebuglepodcast.com/](http://thebuglepodcast.com/)

StartUp: [http://gimletmedia.com/show/startup/](http://gimletmedia.com/show/startup/)

Reply All: [http://gimletmedia.com/show/reply- all/](http://gimletmedia.com/show/reply-all/)

Planet Money: [http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet- money](http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money)

Radiolab: [http://www.radiolab.org/series/podcasts/](http://www.radiolab.org/series/podcasts/)

Invisiblia: [http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510307/invisibilia](http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510307/invisibilia)

This American Life: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/podcast](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/podcast)

</comment><comment><USER8> 1\. Song Exploder: Hrishikesh Hirway interviews composers. In the interview they talk about the process of how one of their songs were created. One of my favorites: [https://soundcloud.com/hrishihirway/song-exploder- no-24-tych...](https://soundcloud.com/hrishihirway/song-exploder-no-24-tycho) Another one of my favorites: [https://soundcloud.com/hrishihirway/songexploder- no-8-loren](https://soundcloud.com/hrishihirway/songexploder-no-8-loren)

2\. Radiolab: This one gets you thinking. I feel like sometimes they will oversimplify very complicated concepts though. One of my favorites: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/worth/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/worth/) (This one is really long. It's like a three in one. Usually they are like 30 minutes long).

3\. Let My People Think: This one is a thinker too.

4\. Here and Now: Basically the news.

5\. NPR All Songs Considered: (I don't listen to this very much) They have guest DJ's, and new music (I'm not much of a fan some of the music they put up). They also have special episodes, which are more interesting. One of my favs: [http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2015/05/19/406500138/th...](http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2015/05/19/406500138/the- songs-that-make-us-cry)

6\. NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour: (I don't listen to this very much) They talk about new movies, shows, books, and songs.

Here is an episode I like from this podcasts (I haven't had the chance to explore the other episodes though): [http://www.radiodiaries.org/new-podcast- strange-fruit-voices...](http://www.radiodiaries.org/new-podcast-strange- fruit-voices-of-a-lynching/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Typically listen to comedy podcasts:

Earwolf and Wolfpop Podcast Networks - [http://earwolf.com/](http://earwolf.com/) & [http://wolfpop.com/](http://wolfpop.com/)

Probably Science, where "four professional comedians/incompetent scientists take you through this week in science. Incompetently." -[http://www.probablyscience.com/](http://www.probablyscience.com/)

General:

[http://longform.org/podcast](http://longform.org/podcast)

</comment><comment><USER10> Startup Related (I don't listen to all of their episodes, but I do listen to several from): \- Tim Ferriss Show \- This Week in Startups \- Geek's Guide to the Galaxy \- A16Z Podcast \- Harvard Business Review \- Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders \- Foundation

Non-Tech: \- Serial (it's over but really interesting) \- Undisclosed (the successor to Serial)

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://www.billburr.com/podcast](http://www.billburr.com/podcast)

</comment><comment><USER12> Scott Johnson's "The Morning Stream", "Film Sack", "Current Geek" and whatever else he puts out. He and his co-hosts are very cheerful. They are more about positive emotions than the substance. It really makes my life better and me not as grumpy.

</comment><comment><USER13> [http://hellointernet.fm](http://hellointernet.fm)

</comment><comment><USER14> In order of personal preference:

Welcome to Night Vale

Limited Resources

The Last Geeks of a Dying World (I know the hosts personally)

Polyamory Weekly

The Dave Ramsey Show

The Tim Ferriss Show

</comment><comment><USER15> Currently working through the catalog of:

SE-Radio: [http://se-Radio.net](http://se-Radio.net)

The Change Log: [https://changelog.com/](https://changelog.com/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Haskell Cast - a Haskell / functional programming-focused pod cast: [http://www.haskellcast.com/](http://www.haskellcast.com/)

</comment><comment><USER17>
      The Simple Programmer Podcast
      Javascript Jabber

</comment><comment><USER18> I've recently been listening to This Developer's Life; also the Blender Guru podcast (about the 3D free-software program a Blender).

</comment><comment><USER19> javascript jabber, I don't always listen so much to the language specifics but the ideas. I enjoy it.

There is also Ruby Rogues which is pretty good too.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hardcore History is the best podcast in the world.

</comment><comment><USER21> I really like Freedomain Radio: [http://fdrpodcasts.com](http://fdrpodcasts.com)

</comment><comment><USER22> Music: Music for Programming. Science: StarTalk Radio. Fun: The Gralien Report, The Paracast.

</comment><comment><USER23> Here's my list for people interested in bootstrapping / side projects:

Startups For the Rest of Us (Rob Walling & Mike Taber) [http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/](http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/)

Tropical MBA podcast [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/tropical-mba- entrepreneu...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/tropical-mba- entrepreneurship/id325757845)

The Startup Chat by Steli Efti & Hiten Shah [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/startup-chat-steli- hiten...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/startup-chat-steli- hiten/id997616345?mt=2)

The Rocketship Podcast [http://rocketship.fm/](http://rocketship.fm/)

Some great podcasts that don't come out often or have a limited amount of episodes:

Kalzumeus Software with Patrick McKenzie (wish it came out more often!) [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kalzumeus-software- podca...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kalzumeus-software- podcasts/id560734474?mt=2)

Stacking the Bricks by Amy Hoy [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/stacking- bricks-real-ent...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/stacking-bricks-real- entrepreneur/id956943158?mt=2)

The Entrepreneur's Guide to Finding Your First Customers [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/entrepreneurs-guide- to-f...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/entrepreneurs-guide-to- finding/id872932172?mt=2)

Product People by Justin Jackson [http://productpeople.tv/](http://productpeople.tv/)

Not so much about bootstrapping, but some great story-telling:

StartUp by Gimlet Media [http://gimletmedia.com/show/startup/](http://gimletmedia.com/show/startup/)

Other:

The Tim Ferriss Show [https://itunes.apple.com/id/podcast/the-tim-ferriss- show/id8...](https://itunes.apple.com/id/podcast/the-tim-ferriss- show/id863897795?mt=2)

Zen Founder [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/zen-founder- startups.-fa...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/zen-founder- startups.-family./id965682541?mt=2)

</comment><comment><USER24> Jeff And Casey Show

Partially Examined Life

This Developer's Life

</comment><comment><USER25> Coder Radio and Rationally Speaking

</comment><comment><USER26> Honestly? For those who want to sort of "escape" the stranglehold of the media elite and do something weird:

Alex Jones is great. [http://www.infowars.com/stream.pls](http://www.infowars.com/stream.pls) (11AM-2PM CST) - He comes from Austin, TX and is sort of an icon around town :)

Another one I love is Coast to Coast FM: [https://www.iheart.com/show/Coast- To-Coast/](https://www.iheart.com/show/Coast-To-Coast/) \- They talk about paranormal / UFO's / Ghosts.

</comment><comment><USER27> StartUp

The Truth

99% Invisible

Planet Money

Criminal

How to Do Everything

Stuff You Should Know

Startups For the Rest of Us

The Memory Palace

The Tim Ferris Show

Smart Passive Income

Freakonomics Radio

Serial (Season 1)

Invisibilia

Wormwood</comment>


Seattle Area Developers: GDGT Event = Your Apps + Our WP7s - <AUTHOR> http://www.manyniches.com/windows-phone/seattle-area-developers-gdgt-event/

<comment><USER2> Super short notice. The event is _today_ at 7pm at Showbox SoDo. I can't make it, but it sounds like a great opportunity to get your hands on real WP7 devices. Wish I had found out about it earlier.

<comment><USER3> <http://thestartupdigest.com/> is useful for finding out about events like this in advance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like fun, I'm going to try to make it. And I'll bring my WinPhone 7 Circuit app with me. <http://icircuitapp.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome...I can't wait to see it.</comment></comment>


Apple's "benign dictatorship" of the App Store leaves users, devs in the dark. - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/app-store-enigma-the-patent-holder-the-developer-and-the-voiceless-child/ <comment><USER2> If Speak for Yourself had developed an app for Android they would have had _none_ of these problems. None. Zilch. There are several markets. There are several stores. You can install standalone APKs if you like.

The nature of the platform _protects you_ from the likes of Apple.

That there are options doesn't make Apple any more right here. I'm not saying that. But there are other platforms than Apple's closed circus. And people should consider them.

With time I hope people will see that value in an open platform. That these people, those who have their daughter threatened to be _re-muted_ by Apple, that they still insist on using Apple's hardware is a mystery to me.

You would at least think that _they_ saw why choosing Apple is fundamentally wrong for any person who considers himself free. If you're not free to do with your own property as you please, how much of a free being are you really?

<comment><USER3> >If Speak for Yourself had developed an app for Android they would have had none of these problems.

No, they would still have the same problem. Google has the killswitch ability. Amazon and Google do remove applications from the store on a regular basis for copyright violations.

EDIT: And the ability to install an APK from anywhere still doesn't mean that they'll be able to keep selling it while the court proceedings are going on. This problem isn't a technical issue. It's a legal one.

<comment><USER4>
         And the ability to install an APK from anywhere
         still doesn't mean that they'll be able to keep
         selling it while the court proceedings are going on.

That's bullshit. Sure they can send you a DMCA take-down notice, but if it's your domain you can use it as toilet paper.

And btw, I haven't seen Google pulling Android from the market in the eve of Oracle's lawsuit. That's because you are still free to sell your products until _infringement is actually proved_ !

<comment><USER3> Google didn't pull Android from the market during the lawsuit because the judge stopped that motion from Oracle.

If PRC made that motion, and the judge allowed it, Speak for Yourself WOULD have to pull the APK.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but actually making that motion and convincing a judge is a lot more work than just sending a letter (to any or all of Apple/Google/Amazon/etc). That's one of the important checks and balances in the legal process that PRC was able to work around (with Apple's help).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm still waiting for the lawsuit that forces apple to provide an option to install unreviewed apps. Nobody would tolerate this kind of total platform control in OS X or windows. Why is it tolerated in iOS?

It's perfectly fine to have a a curated app store by default, it's not OK when it's the only option. Especially when your as big as Apple is.

<comment><USER7> While I do agree with some criticisms regarding Apple's management of their app ecosystem, I'm much more fearful of a legal regime that could step in and simply dictate the business operations of a private entity.

If you are critical of Apple's 'dictatorship', how can you be comfortable with the idea that the government is going to wield its power any better? You can choose not to do business with Apple. Try that with the government.

We aren't talking about public safety, fraudulent behavior, or monopolistic advantage here. You can even utilize Apple's hardware and ditch their curated ecosystem if you want (jail break your phone). Nobody is going to stop you.

Running to a lawyer and the courts when you don't _like_ the product offerings of a private company is absurd.

<comment><USER8> "I'm much more fearful of a legal regime that could step in and simply dictate the business operations of a private entity."

Which is so unlike the legal regime that backs up that "private" entity when it uses government granted privilege to keep competitors at bay (such as with patents and insane copyright legislation).

I would be perfectly fine with having their own little private ecosystem where they pull the rug out from under developers -- if they would stop trying to undermine those trying to compete with it via lawsuits, for that would just mean that they would ultimately learn their lesson. But when the government stands behind their tyranny over developers, they never learn.

<comment><USER9> Did you just suggest that, to teach Apple a lesson for protecting granted patents[1] - which is legal - the government should control what they can and cannot do with something they created?

[1] If the patent system is good/evil/broken/whatever is a separate argument. And if the patent system is the problem you fix the patent system, not something else that isn't related to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One side of this story I can't figure out is how _wildly bad_ Apple's PR has been. They refused to comment for this story. Seriously? I can understand how this happened (it's just an app, there's a plausible lawsuit, pull it). But once that little girls face went up... ?

Apple is in no danger here. They can just say "On further review, the plaintiff's case is not as strong as we thought; we'll wait for the courts to decide and eagerly await their decision.". But there's nothing from them at all. They didn't put the app back up, they didn't issue a statement. They wouldn't even talk to Ars about this story. What's going on in there? This is a PR disaster.

So... what would Steve have done?

<comment><USER11> He would have waited for the drama to mostly blow over, and then, if they made a decision to put a stake in the ground over the story, would have written a plain-English 3 paragraph letter published on their website about what Apple's strategy moving forward regarding the issue would be.

Most of the time, though, Apple just doesn't get involved in stuff like this. What's in it for them? It's not actually a PR disaster for Apple; if anything, from a coldly calculated perspective, this is good PR for Apple.

<comment><USER3> >What's in it for them? It's not actually a PR disaster for Apple; if anything, from a coldly calculated perspective, this is good PR for Apple.

That's pretty much it. There's basically nothing they could say or do that works out for them in either the long run or short run.

If they leave it up after the C&D/DMCA/whatever complaint, they could be sued. If they make a statement that's remotely in support of PRC's case, the story suddenly isn't PRC vs. Speak for Yourself, it's Apple vs. a little girl. If they make a statement in support of Speak for Yourself, it's suddenly PRC vs. Apple. None of those outcomes are positive PR. While the third is a feel-good move, it doesn't actually do anything positive with the case.

It's in Apple's best interest to just pull the app and stay silent until the courts decide the case.

<comment><USER10> > If they leave it up after the C&D/DMCA/whatever complaint, they could be > sued.

Sure, that's a risk (though probably a small one: they _know_ the revenue this app is producing, so they know what the maximum likely damages will be -- this certainly doesn't look like a big market to me). Bad PR is a risk too (I mean really: did you _see_ that girl's face? You seriously aren't sympathetic? You think no one else is?). Why'd they take it down if they were going to "stay silent"?

<comment><USER3> >Bad PR is a risk too (I mean really: did you see that girl's face? You seriously aren't sympathetic? You think no one else is?). Why'd they take it down if they were going to "stay silent"?

I really am sympathetic to her, and that's the problem for Apple. PRC's actions, while they may be legal and proper, just don't feel right after reading that story.

It's an intensely emotional story. It's hard not to feel that Apple and PRC are the "bad guys" here. Apple's actions could be, at from a purely unemotional and logical view, be defended as a proper response to the situation. PRC's suit could have merit. But because of the emotional baggage, the moment Apple makes a statement defending or explaining their actions, the story absolutely changes from "PRC sues Speak for Yourself, and little girl is caught in the crossfire" to "Apple vs. little girl".

Apple cannot win that. Nobody can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I got sued once in a similar way, for an app a competitor claimed copied their UI and violated trade dress, copyright etc. Apple didn't pull our app though, and it seems so fraught that Apple is making legal judgments both ways.

Our competitor sent a complaint to Apple, so we re-assured Apple, sued the complaining company, they counter-sued, and eventually settled.

The suit cost about 20k and we made minor changes to the app UI as a result. Waste of time and money for everyone.

Throwaway account and no other details because I'm under NDA.

<comment><USER13> I've posted here about my similar case before. I spent easily as much on lawyers fighting a frivolous copyright claim against my app, and after initially prevailing, the other guy simply moved jurisdictions and started over. This was two years ago, so things might have changed, but Apple was patient and did _not_ pull my app while the legal process was in motion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's the one thing that bugs me most about Apple. Not the kill switch, not the pricing, but the complete and total lack of objective transparency on the app store. Would it _absoulutely kill them_ to come out with some hard and fast rules? It's not that difficult.

<comment><USER15> Edit: here's a copy of the actual rules [http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/app-store- guide...](http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/app-store- guidelines.pdf)

<comment><USER14> Those are guidelines, not rules, and they're rather ambiguous in many places.

<comment><USER16> Guidelines, but Apple is really sticking with them. When they reject an app, they always give a reason.

As for the ambiguity - there will always be some.

<comment><USER17> In the recent Airfoil Speakers flap, they neither stuck to their rules nor gave a reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a user it doesn't leave me in the dark. I look at the store 'shelf' and select what I want. I'm about as interested in the behind the scenes of the App Store as I would be about how my local grocery store shelves are stocked. I'm sure it's fascinating I just don't care very much. If they don't have exactly the type of soup I am looking for I'll probably just get a slightly different type of soup. At worst maybe I would have to consider shopping at a different store instead. If they explained to me that they decided not to carry this brand of soup because sometimes the can explodes and shoots metal shards in your face I would I actually appreciate their choice to stop selling it. I don't need soup cans exploding in my face and I don't really have time to keep up with all the details of how soup cans are made, what the different types are, which types of cans are the most reliable/safe, etc. I'm fine with the grocery store handling that for me.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have never dealt with Apple and the app store, but I have a question for those who do. Many of the complaints regard transparency and frequency of communications. Is it a lack of communication on Apple's part? Do your attempts to initiate communication with them and get status updates or discuss issues fail? Or do you expect Apple to initiate all communications for you and they never do?

<comment><USER20> From my experience any attempt to contact phone support is totally useless and will not get you anythings. Email support will get instead only not nice responses. Usually if you contact Apple it's because you have problems, whatever the reson, missed payments, app rejections etc... you will get only closed doors from them. I might be drastic but i came to the conclusion that there is NOTHING in the Apple's "dictatorship" that is benign.

I believe that their behaviour is because they are Apple. They don't need you. You need them. So or you stick with what they give you or you can leave. Personally I left. But sadly to make them care one person is not enough. Too many people are still "blind", or stuck with them and cannot leave.

<comment><USER19> Followup questions then. Do they have a phone line you can use? When you contacted them were you friendly, terse, unfriendly? Just from my own dealings with other forms of customer service I've found that most people who find the support unpleasant, untimely, etc. are terse in their communication. This isn't the same as unfriendly, it's just blunt and overly concise. Support folks get so much communication they tend to take it much like being unfriendly and put them at the bottom of the queue. Sometimes, of course, the support staff are just unpleasant or slow or bogged down in bureaucracy.

<comment><USER21> I've called them, and they've called me several times relating to various different issues.

They've always been very pleasant and happy to help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm just curious, are there any instances of Apple Killing already purchased apps? I know I still have a 4 year old tethering app. I don't know if it even works on current versions, but I just haven't deleted it. I still have VLC for iOS. So it seems like the family's paranoia that apple will kill the already purchased app overblown.

<comment><USER23> Yes, there was an app that had a back-door built into it so the app could be secretly used to jail-break the device it was running on. This was pulled from the market.

<comment><USER19> Pulled from the market != killed.

They've pulled many apps for various reasons, so far they haven't reached into user devices and removed/disabled apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It seems a bit weird that they are choosing to sell nothing and take on a giant PR campaign rather than simply port this to Android or any other tablet OS and get on with life. This is a very specialized app where anybody with an affected child will gladly buy a custom piece of hardware if necessary to get the job done.

(Of course, they may still get a "real" legal injunction from selling it of some kind, but then at least they can stop complaining about their competitor back-dooring the justice system).

</comment><comment><USER25> From my own experience, once you have purchased/downloaded an app you can install/re-install it on devices without any restriction, but you would be wise to keep a copy of the .ipa somewhere. I downloaded the VLC app on my iPhone before it was pulled and have since been able to install it onto an iPad I bought last month no problem. Obviously it won't be updated so the problem of future compatibility is still an issue.

</comment><comment><USER26> not sure benign is the right word.. but sure.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Benign"?

What would a malignant dictatorship be like?

</comment><comment><USER28> Can we end these articles please? They're link bait.

Apple users are wildly happy according to surveys. The platform is still the strongest dev environment is Apple's history. The tradeoff is reduced control over your hardware and software. Not perfect, but concessions are made.

The use of metaphors is always what rings false though. The 'crystal prison' or leaving users in the 'dark'. Users are given a touch device that talks to everyone on the planet, can download things for 100 pennies, and becomes more useful with time. User don't see this as a dark prison in any way.

<comment><USER29> That's a pretty callous take on a story that discusses how a tool designed to help children with autism got taken out of the App Store.

May want to click the link first next time.

<comment><USER28> This is the third or forth rewrite of this same content seen on the frontpage on HN in 24 hours. It is link bait.</comment></comment></comment>


A simpler, faster, and more fully-featured blogging platform - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eatonphil.com/2015-10-19/introduction-to-blogful <comment><USER2> Kudos to you for doing this! You certainly caught my attention upon writing the terms "static", "syndication", and "analytics"! But a few questions: 1\. Can this be self-hosted? I ask because why else would you mention that it is java-centric. (I'd much prefer to control my own data, as do others I imagine.) 2\. Also, is syndication expected to be a la POSSE? (See [http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE](http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE) )

Again, kudos and good luck to you!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Actually I mentioned Java as a marketing ploy (most of the other platforms are written in Node, Ruby, or PHP).

However, I have been considering a self-hosted option. But I originally planned for that to be geared more toward enterprise situations.

A la POSSE sounds about right!

Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you thought about version control? I hate Wordpress because its idea of version control is so 1980's, it's more or less like RCS or SCCS.

Why would anyone ever want a changeset? /sarcasm

<comment><AUTHOR> This is definitely something worth looking into, thanks for bringing it up! I was planning to involve checksums in an API article lookup and storing changes in an archive might be an interesting thing to do as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 404 page not found. Certainly simpler and faster.

</comment><comment><USER5> How will this differ from the many static site generators already available? Is it only the fact that you host the site?

</comment><comment><USER6> tons of your pages are 404s (including most of your static assets, so when there is content, it is completely unstyled)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an issue with Wordpress on my old blog that I believe was caused when I changed subdomains. It has nothing to do with Blogful so it is not something I'm extremely interested in dealing with. I plan to migrate the two non-post pages over to Blogful and leave the old blog as an archive in whatever state it is in.

<comment><USER7> OP's was definitely more of a marketing tip; also brokenness may hurt your Google juice.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. Getting things cleaned up is definitely one of my highest priorities. I appreciate the reminder.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley's Exclusive Salary Database - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valleys-exclusive-salary-database <comment><USER2> Glassdoor dramatically underestimates salaries. My position is listed as about half of what I'm actually paid (and I'm "average"). Paysa and LinkedIn are accurate for my position, but I think both generally tend to underestimate most people's total comp as well, particularly for software engineers in the Bay Area. Honestly, as bizarre as it sounds, comp info from Blind seems to be the most accurate. Levels.fyi is fairly accurate as well, but only if you look at the newest entries on the spreadsheet (and not on the level averages on the main page).

<comment><USER3> Glassdoor is old enough now their data comes from 10+ years ago, and the bulk of their salary numbers come from the depths of the great recession. It's no wonder their numbers are out of wack.

I also highly doubt they adjust their submitted salaries for inflation.

<comment><USER4> It wouldn't make any sense to adjust the salaries for inflation would it? Only if salaries were moving up with inflation, and they're not. Haven't been for decades, I thought that was across the board.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For top paying companies (goog/fb/netflix/uber...), here are the total compensation ranges i derived from various Blind threads:

3\. (entry level) software engineer : $175k-$225k

4\. (experienced or phd) software engineer : $225k-$300k

5\. senior software engineer: $300k-$400k

6\. staff software engineer/engineering manager: $400k-$550k

7\. senior staff software engineer/senior engineering manager: $550k-$750k

8\. principal engineer/engineering director: $750k - $1m

As a data point, my own comp. is above the corresponding range here due to stock appreciation.

<comment><USER6> wow. can you include base + bonus + stock info here?

I am currently hw/sw engineer at AMD austin (rank: Staff Engineer) and I get paid 140K base + 80-100K stocks. Yearly refresh is 10-20K. This data makes me cry.

<comment><USER5> Senior Engineer example: $180k salary $30k cash bonus $150k stock

<comment><USER6> senior engineer is how many years of experience out of school? with/without PhD? area?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My take is very different from the Wired article: I think Option Impact is a great resource. Anytime an early stage founder asks me about salary/equity comps, I tell them to check out OI.

If a hiring manager wants to use this data to gouge employees then that's a problem with their ethics, not OI. The place where OI is incredibly useful is for making fair offers, especially for roles you're unfamiliar with. Maybe your company has 6 engineers and you're about to hire your first PM. What should you offer them? A market salary would be $X. You are not trying to figure out X so that you can make a lowball offer; you're trying to figure out X so that you don't offer 1.5X (which hurts your capacity to make future hires) or 0.5X (which might come off as stupid or insulting to the candidate). OI tells you what X is.

Data transparency is a good thing. It helps people avoid dumb mistakes. To be honest, I think it would be great if employees could have access to this data, too.

<comment><USER8> It would be great if OI could let employees see this data.

It would also kill OI's business model: provide a semi-legal mechanism for hiring-collusion among the giants and their wannabes.

<comment><USER9> It sounds like collusion. I guess the anonymized profiles helps mitigate that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems weird that Wired focuses on the negative edge case here. At Vicarious we use OptionImpact to make sure everyone is paid fairly, and I imagine that's the vast majority of users. Deceiving someone into taking a lowball salary is a very shortsighted way to run a business, and I have trouble believing any well-run company actually does this.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sigh.

If you are running a start up and you're using this to fuck over your very first employees' salary then please take a long hard look at yourself in the mirror. You are decieving the very people you are hiring to make your business a success. Are you really cut out for this kind of work if you deliberately fucked over your first and likely some of the most important employees in your business? Just to save a tiny fraction of some VC's money?

With respect, I think if this is you then you may as well shut the startup now and save everyone the time and pain and money that will inevitably come later (either due to failure stemming from your questionable ethics and questionable business acumen evident from your hiring practices, or when your employees/engineers #1-10 realised you conned them and they leave for someone else and leave you in the lurch at some critical point). It's not going to be a great experience for anyone.

<comment><USER12> Even later stage companies should wise up. It costs a fortune to recruit talent into a company. Any small bumps in pay you can offer to increase retention is a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yeah, this is happening, we had to know it would. Imagine if real estate transactions weren't recorded publicly - a small number of real estate agents would create a private database of all transactions, while everyone else would be limited to snippets of conversation and bits of unreliable info posted here and there on the web. The disadvantage to being an outsider to the information would be overwhelming.

This is one reason why I favor making all salary information public. I know it freaks a lot of people out, but I work for a public university where all salaries are public, and while the earth shattering problems I hear about haven't materialized, the information it brings to the workforce is very positive (you can actually see what the university pays your future colleagues when you weight a job offer). The main disadvantage is that our info is public but private colleges keep it, well, private, which probably does put the publics at yet another disadvantage (Stanford can easily find out how much all the profs and staff at Berkeley and UCSF earn, but not the other way around).

If this happened in the private sector, I think there would be a bit of a well deserved reckoning, but far more good would come of it than harm. If a blanket requirement would be too intrusive or unconstitutional, I think the gov't could make it a condition for H1B visas, which does have a nice consistency to it (if a corporate HR dept is going to be empowered to decide who does and doesn't get to work in the US - a massive power usually reserved for government - then it's very reasonable to ask for a high level of transparency).

By this, I mean that if a company requests an H1B visa, they must make all salary info public the way public institutions are required to, not just for the particular job, and not anonymously.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've also felt that Glassdoor, across the board, very much underestimates real salaries, and this further supports that. Anyone can think of a reason why this happens? One would be that they have old, historial salaries in their averages.

<comment><USER15> Isn't Glassdoor across all of US whereas this is probably mostly SV based companies?

<comment><USER16> You can filter down by city. I do agree even then it's underestimating but if I can be arrogant for a moment, I believe people who read HN are accustomed to slightly higher compensation than the average

<comment><USER17> The median salary for software developers nationally is $103k per BLS. According to Glassdoor it is $104k in SF. Do you really think ordinary developers in the Bay Area are getting paid national median salaries to live in an exceptionally high cost of living area? I think even the least among us are smarter than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How has this not been leaked yet?

<comment><USER19> Agreed, anyone who has access to this and hasn't leaked it is a collaborator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Don't be this guy, employees will figure it out.

> He recalls walking away from negotiations with a newly hired employee > thinking, "Man, this guy is underpaid—we got a good deal."

<comment><USER8> Yes, calling the start of a relationship a "deal", frames that relationship as transactional. That plus bragging about underpaying him simply means "I'll stab you in the back the moment you look away"

<comment><USER21> Wait, an employee-employer relationship isn't transactional? I agree with you that bragging is a bad look but I also agree with an above commenter who says that the point of using OI is that you're trying to find $X to avoid outlier mistakes.

But I think it's naive to expect that salary negotiation isn't adversarial. Both sides are trying to get an optimal deal. Employees making data-driven acceptance decisions is better than "employees figuring it out" later.

<comment><USER8> A transactional relationship is fine if the employee is not integral and will remain not integral throughout their employment at the company. But if a founder is hiring the first few engineers, or executives, or anyone of importance-- he or she should be thinking about their futures: in particular, how they might feel about being low-balled vis-a-vis their peers.

"If I pay this smart, black, female engineer less than every other male engineer, just because she doesn't have a college degree, how would that look if everyone found out?" [1]

"Adversarial" is expected in a negotiation. Short-sightedness is not. "Bragging" about stiffing staff isn't just a a bad look, it's a sign that the dealmaker is an animal in human skin.

I'm sure 10% of OI's users have good intentions. The rest are living examples for why hiring collusion is outlawed and subject to prosecution.

[1] Yes, I worked for a startup that did exactly that, and was surprised when the engineers started quitting weeks after the truth came out.

<comment><USER21> I don't think any of your concerns are necessarily (important qualifier) driven by use of OI data on the employer side, and the use of the typical salary estimate services on the employee side. Of course there are going to be bad actors and toxic workplaces where the data is being used to lowball. I don't deny that it happens. I don't think those that do are going to be able to survive long, because once the word is on the street that a company is doing that it's gonna be very tough for them to hire talent competitively.

FWIW, when I mentioned "bad look", I meant it in the extended sense that you're talking about here, so I agree that employers should never do that, and even that it's a warning sign. I think it definitely impacts the culture of a startup in a negative way and it's a horrible way to treat people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> if you have access to this, it's your moral responsibility to leak it

</comment><comment><USER23> The most interesting headline today. The article has very little information. Hope to see a followup.

</comment><comment><USER24> How is this not considered collusion?

<comment><USER25> Collusion is illegal cooperation. This is legal.

<comment><USER26> How is this legal? Let's take a hypothetical example:

Joe is employee #2 FoolzRUs, at a Sequoia-backed startup, in CA. The company is small, having 10 employees total, and maybe 6 engineers. Joe is interviewing to get another job, because he feels that his company is not going to last. The prospective employer happens to be a growing company that was funded by Sequoia. The recruiter looks up FoolzRUs in Option Impact and deduces that the Principal Engineer at FoolzRUs sounds like Joe, and thus, his salary. Now she does not have to ask Joe what his salary is, but is she violating California's new law, where an she is barred from asking Joe what his compensation is?

<comment><USER27> She is violating the law. California doesn't allow seeking his past salary data in the hiring process. This is true even if they don't seek it from him.

Of course, they can use general data that they think matches his experience. But not if they're using that as a way to dig for his individual past salary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> good headline but only useful for startups and i suppose it comes "free" with VC money. regular companies share salaries with an aggregator (i forget the name) and it's repackaged for sale to other participating companies. USA-wide at least.

I think the aggregator/sharing company is owned by equifax. there might be more than one of them.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is all about symmetry of information. Which I want to remind everyone that during the who's hiring posts we need to consider. I exclusively upvote companies that post salary ranges. I know some users even downvote those that don't. Plus posting salaries saves everyone time and effort.

</comment><comment><USER30> This sort-of reads like an ad...

</comment><comment><USER31> The databases (Glassdoor, etc) I've seen are pretty close on base salary. There are outlier mistakes but generally close. They get some of their data from H1B applications. This misses bonuses and equity, and can be a little lower than non-H1B, but the numbers I've had first hand knowledge on are 100% accurate.

</comment><comment><USER32> How would "steve" as a engineer have access to something that presumably would be jealously guarded by the hr director.

<comment><USER33> Startup. Logins are routinely shared for third party software.

<comment><USER32> Even some this sensitive - that's just asking for trouble

<comment><USER33> Yup. It's not uncommon in the slightest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why do data scientists have such a high salary? Everyone seems to be one at the moment.

<comment><USER2> They don't at all. At typical companies, their salaries are maybe a bit higher than software engineers. At top companies though, their base and bonus is the same, but stock is about half (unless you're a core DS or have an AI/ML PhD). Also, 4-5 years working on a PhD could have been spent gaining experience as a software engineer, which means that all total a data scientist at FANG will make $100k to $250k per year less than a software engineer at the same age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Where do I get this?

</comment><comment><USER36> > the daunting task of hiring a team, from low-level engineers to a new VP

I don't think "low-level" means what the article's author thinks it means.

</comment><comment><USER37> How do we shut this place - Option Impact - down?

Ideally, regulators would, but we live in a hyper-capitalistic age, so they probably won't.

<comment><USER38> I mean, I don't know if I'd want anyone to shut it down. Just somebody leak it and the playing field is evened out again (and from the sounds of it, we all get big raises after switching jobs).

<comment><USER39> Don't shut it down, make it open so we can all benefit. But I imagine no one would update it.

From a data standpoint, using such a resource to determine salaries would like cause salaries to become predictable, based solely on what other people paid for the combination of experiences used to classify the salaries (Ruby programmers with 5 years of experience in startups of size Z get X). So salaries would tend to not diversify much from the median (perhaps tend down a little).

<comment><USER40> That also neglects the quality of those 5 years of experience as it relates to the actual position. 5 years of designing financial services systems is more valuable to a financial services company than 5 years of building web applications for a dating company.

That is the problem I have with collective bargaining in higher skilled fields — it assumes people are interchangeable based on worthless "years of experience" metrics. Some sysadmin with 20 year experience might not know the first thing about DevOps, while a fresh college graduate might be an expert. Yet the 20 year guy would get paid more despite knowing less.

<comment><USER41> The problem of outliers not being able to fully maximize their earnings under collective bargaining is a substantially smaller issue than everyone being underpaid without collective bargaining.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>