Justice Department says it will end use of private prisons - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/08/18/justice-department-says-it-will-end-use-of-private-prisons/ <comment><USER2> This is a good start but we must end the use of State private prisons as well. Do you even know who your state representatives are??

Call your state reps: [http://tryvoices.com/](http://tryvoices.com/)

ACLU: [https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/end-prisons- profit](https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/end-prisons-profit)

<comment><USER3> Agree 100%. A small step in the right direction. Our criminal justice system needs serious overhauls on SO many levels. Unfortunately, it is not only the fault of law enforcement, politicians, and judges. They are simply representing the will of the people. The heart of American citizens need to change. We live in such an unforgiving society. Despite what anyone says, America and Americans don't believe in 2nd chances. Anyone that survives our legal system and incarceration will NEVER have a true 2nd chance because we as Americans cannot and will not collectively forgive. I blame the media to be honest for perpetuating fear in the hearts of the masses. We live in a sad country filled with sad, fearful, unforgiving people. Maybe a blanket statement, but one that I believe to be true.

<comment><USER4> I completely agree. And considering forgiveness is such a core tenant of Christianity, it's surprising that people call the U.S. a Christian nation. Our use of capital punishment is also bizarre when you factor in the religious component. Or the utter lack of care for the poor.

And I'm not saying religion should influence our laws, but I find the hypocrisy astounding when the far right in this country is hell-bent on pushing their religious beliefs into our laws and government policies (abortion, birth control, marriage, etc).

<comment><USER5> > And considering forgiveness is such a core tenant of Christianity,

In civilization, individual members give up the right for revenge to the state, who punishes perpetrators. Individuals may forgive a perpetrator, but that doesn't mean he/she should not be punished by the state.

Compare this with societies with practices such as qisas or blood money: if an individual (or family) forgives a perpetrator, they are not punished.

Having the government punishing people and the main religion stopping revenge cycles is a really good system!

Furthermore, the USA is lenient in sentencing and family are forging towards convicts. Compare this to Asian countries (such as Japan). In Japan, parents will break off all ties to their children if they are sentenced for a crime -- even a fairly minor one.

Try to do some petty vandalism or other anti-social behaviour in Japan, Korea or Singapore and compare the result with the result in the US.

<comment><USER6> Downsides of qisas: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Allen_Davis_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Allen_Davis_incident)

<comment><USER7> That's reads more like spies doing spy stuff with other spies. The guy was going to get out of it anyway, but blood money was the most politically sensitive way for the US and Pakistan to deal with the issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Corrections Corp down 20%

[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ACXW](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ACXW)

<comment><USER9> Now 37%. It's insane that prisons could be on the stock market at all. Talk about perverse incentives....

<comment><USER10> Insane are the people who look at that stock and say, "that's a good investment"...

<comment><USER11> So, it's perfectly fine to personally enrich yourself by:

A) Working as a prison guard/admin (in which your job security/salary increase with incarceration);

B) Hiring released convicts (in which your model becomes increasingly profitable as more of the labor force is branded as less hireable due to greater incarceration);

C) Supplying goods to prisons (in which your specialization at the problems of delivery to prisons becomes more valuable with greater incarceration)

D) Lobbying for tough-on-crime laws due to the above incentives, as e.g. CO interest groups have done [1]

But running the prison itself? "That's too much, man!"

Frankly, the anti-private prison movement is, IMHO, very confused. Numerous groups financially profit from the prison system _even_ when they're publicly run, and such prisons produce the same egregious incentives to encourage more incarceration. (See the three-strikes lobbying.)

It seems like a way to exploit anti-market, anti-profit bias to get the masses enraged at an enormous red herring -- which, by the way, is still only 6-16% [2].

[1] [http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/the_undue_influen...](http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/the_undue_influence_of_californias_prison_guards_union- californias_correctional_industrial_complex.pdf)

[2] [https://www.aclu.org/issues/mass- incarceration/privatization...](https://www.aclu.org/issues/mass- incarceration/privatization-criminal-justice/private-prisons)

<comment><USER4> There is a big difference between profiting from people versus profiting indirectly through supplies that a public prison uses.

The incentives are totally backwards. The state should be encouraging people to not be in prison, but instead we have monetary incentives in place for putting more people in prison and keeping them there.

<comment><USER11> Not true -- the incentives are the same, and we see how they have led CO orgs at _public_ prisons to lobby for longer sentences, exactly the danger that's somehow unique to private prisons. And I explained how the same incentives exist for all the other private orgs that specialize in servicing prisons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you want to know more about what goes on in these prisons, a reporter spent some time in 2014 working for a (state) private prison and wrote an article about the experience: [http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca- private-pris...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private- prisons-corrections-corporation-inmates-investigation-bauer).

<comment><USER13> That was a great article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The same entity (government, state or federal) that sentences individuals to imprisonment should be the same entity responsible for bearing the burden of imprisoning the individual.

<comment><USER15> If you mean the economic burden, yes, but I don't think they need to bear all the burden

My big complaint with private prisons, as they stand today, is that they tend to get paid based on heads and beds. As such, prisons are rewarded when prisoners behave badly (extending their stay), and when former prisoners reoffend (repeating their stay). There are no countervailing economic pressures.

If we want prisons to work, we need the economics to work in favor of societal goals. Everything else equal, a prison that generates low recidivism should get paid more than one that generates high recidivism, because they're eliminating future costs.

<comment><USER16> > If we want prisons to work, we need the economics to work in favor of > societal goals.

This is true, but we already ignore that for our prison population. Otherwise, our system would be less punitive and more aimed to reformation and building productive citizens.

<comment><USER17> Proof that not only do individuals double down on beliefs in the face evidence against them, but so do groups/organizations/governments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The real problem is at the State level, although this is a good precedent for future suits.

<comment><USER19> Exactly this. From TFA, this is _federal_ prisons only, and affects precisely 13 prisons. That just leaves the other ~130 private state prisons.

The plummeting stock will rebound the moment the market stops panicking, and some vultures will make a killing. It's big business, and they won't go quietly into the night.

<comment><USER20> Can these federal private prisons just start accepting state inmates? Thereby remaining profitable?

<comment><USER21> No. These facilities are privately _operated_ , but are owned by the federal government. The operators can't choose to turn them into state prisons, no more than they could choose to turn them into hotels.

<comment><USER22> At the risk of sounding frivolous, there are numerous prisons that have been turned into hotels.

[http://www.nileguide.com/blog/2010/10/30/incarcer- vacations-...](http://www.nileguide.com/blog/2010/10/30/incarcer- vacations-11-prison-turned-hotels/)

<comment><USER23> The _government_ can choose to do that (in those cases, sell off the property). Not private prison operators. The issue of property rights, not the inherent concepts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> About time ... I hope this brings the cost of making outgoing calls from prisons down as well... No reason for calls to cost in excess of $1 a minute these days...

<comment><USER25> I'm curious what the breakdown in nonmonopolistic cost of this would be. I assume the largest component is the cost of surveillance to make sure they aren't taking out a hit on someone?

<comment><USER26> I doubt it. We're already all paying for that to be conducted on everyone in the country.

<comment><USER25> By a totally different entity who is going to avoid submitting its data into court records.

<comment><USER26> Isn't the FBI also conducting similar kinds of surveillance activities as the NSA, though not as broad in scope?

<comment><USER25> Here is an introduction to the 4th amendment law surrounding wiretapping, drawn by a New York defense attorney: [http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1704](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1704)

Note that it assumes that an investigation is being conducted for the purpose of submitting evidence to a court.

<comment><USER26> Sorry, I seem to have misunderstood a crucial part of what you were saying, which is: using the data as evidence in court. I also dug around to see if the FBI has any surveillance apparatus like what the NSA is doing and didn't come up with anything credible in the few minutes I looked. They appear capable, but, as of yet, have not started that anyone knows of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The only right way to do private prisons is to give each prisoner a fixed grant with which they can use to buy space in a prison. This is the only way the prison's incentive can match those of the prisoner.

<comment><USER28> You get what you incentivize. If you incentivize headcount, you get a higher headcount (thanks to lobbyists) Your suggestion might improve facilities, but that's not quite the goal either.

If the goal of our system is to reform and reintegrate people who have committed crimes back into the society, maybe that's what we should be incentivizing.

We could develop quality measurements based on outcomes, and give bonuses based on the percentile prisons rank in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For interests sake, the top global incarceration rates[0] are listed below. Note that influencing the Seychelles number is their small population (around 100,000) and the fact that they house a number of jailed Somali pirates.

Prisoners per 100,000 population: 1: Seychelles, 799 ; 2: United States, 698 ; 3: North Korea, 650 ; 4: St. Kitts and Nevis, 607 ; 5: Turkmenistan 583 ; 6: Virgin Islands (United States), 542 ; 7: Cuba, 510 ; 8: Rwanda, 492 ; 9: Guam (United States), 469 ; 10: El Salvador, 465

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate#Incarceration_rates)

<comment><USER30> Explain St. Kitts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Good. Next step towards a civilized society:

End the death penalty.

Unless you want to remain on the same list as a couple of medieval-minded countries, that is.

<comment><USER32> You mean like Japan and India?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think this is huge. Private prisons are already illegal in New York and Illinois and a few other states, and the federal government not using them will help other states flip.

<comment><USER34> Are prisons in new York and Illinois relatively more or less humane than other states? How about per capita incarceration rates?

<comment><USER35> Rikers is infamously horrible, but it's a jail, not a prison. It's run by NYC.

[http://www.vice.com/read/the-feds-are-suing-new-york-city- be...](http://www.vice.com/read/the-feds-are-suing-new-york-city-because- rikers-island-is-a-gitmo-style-hellhole-1218)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> this just makes me glad that Garry Johnson is campaigning on criminal justice reform. From his website

"How is it that the United States, the land of the free, has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world? The answer is simple: Over time, the politicians have "criminalized" far too many aspects of people's personal lives.

The failed War on Drugs is, of course, the greatest example. Well over 100 million Americans have, at one time or another, used marijuana. Yet, today, simple possession and use of marijuana remains a crime — despite the fact that a majority of Americans now favor its legalization.

And who is most harmed by the War on Drugs? Minorities, the poor, and anyone else without access to high-priced attorneys."

<comment><USER37> He supports private prisons though, he cited building them as one of his greatest achievements as governor. Presumably he won't be happy with this decision.

<comment><USER36> this is true, however he wrote in his personal blog that:

"Never in that process did I experience any pressure to "fill beds" in the private prisons we built. And if I had, it wouldn't have worked. It might happen elsewhere, but it absolutely did not happen in New Mexico when I was Governor. At the time, the "per-prisoner" cost in the state prisons was $76 per day. The cost to house prisoners in the private facilities was $56 per day. Better service, lower cost."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Weird thought -- has anyone ever considered non-profits privately running prisons? Advocacy groups, human rights NGO's, hell why not even religious institutions. You think we need prison reform, here's your chance . . .

<comment><USER39> The Quakers invented solitary punishment.

<comment><USER40> How did they enforce it? Couldn't the prisoner just leave? Or were these non- pacifist Quakers?

<comment><USER41> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_State_Penitentiary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_State_Penitentiary)

<comment><USER39> Yeah. It's an interesting place to visit. I also believe that originally a "penitentiary" referred to a prison where prisoners were held in solitary confinement, with the goal of reform, or 'penance.'

But we should remember that solitary confinement is almost universally worse than other forms of punishment, in terms of the mental toll it takes upon the inmate. The Wikipedia page is a good place to start: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitary_confinement#Historica...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solitary_confinement#Historical_controversy)

<comment><USER41> That was indeed the idea. Sit alone in your cell, read your bible and pray to become a better person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I know I'm probably in the minority here, but what we really need to do is only keep violent offenders in prison, and everyone else can be free.

<comment><USER43> That won't help: mass incarceration is primarily a phenomenon involving "violent" offenses.

[http://harvardjol.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/HLL104_crop...](http://harvardjol.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/HLL104_crop1.pdf)

By way of example, a plurality of offenders awaiting trial in Cook County lockup are there for domestic violence.

<comment><USER17> Interesting paper. I do like that it addresses that many prison wins could be had through prosecutorial reforms. While the War on Drugs may have little secondary effect, it was in the same timeframe as "tough on crime" rhetoric as a whole, and with it came prosecutorial aggressiveness.

Also the decline of the middle class began around this time period as well...

The paper also notes how incredibly difficult prosecutorial reforms would be to come by, which seems both true and depressing.

<comment><USER43> It does not gloss over that; it considers that possibility in detail, and addresses it with facts.

But ultimately, yes: the problem isn't the war on drugs or long sentences (at least not directly), but rather the staffing and aggressiveness of prosecutors.

<comment><USER17> Yup, I changed my comment while you were replying. I still disagree that a lot of this isn't the result of the War on Drugs (and there are studies that agree[1]: _" More than 50 percent of people in federal prisons are incarcerated for drug law violations. Almost 500,000 people are behind bars for a drug law violation on any given night in the United States – ten times the total in 1980."_) but again we end at the same conclusion.

[1] [http://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA%20Fact%20S...](http://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA%20Fact%20Sheet_Drug%20War%20Mass%20Incarceration%20and%20Race_\(Feb.%202016\).pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I am glad to see this move, but

      > The 13 privately run facilities will not close overnight.

That is, this affects 13 prisons. I'll take it, but not exactly a sweeping reform.

<comment><USER45> There are only around 100 federal prisons total. This is a large chunk for the federal level. State prisons are a much larger issue.

<comment><USER44> Agreed on both counts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> FTA: _" Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or "substantially reduce" the contracts' scope."_

So the options are 1) decline to renew the contract, 2) renew the contract or 3) reduce the scope of the contract... _when the contract is up for renewal_ , within the next 5 years?

So, what's the incentive for any federal official to select Option 1...or, barring explicit resources to make up the difference, Option 3 for that matter?

This is a "feel good" move. I predict little, if anything, will be changed as a result of this in 5 years' time.

</comment><comment><USER47> So when are we shutting down half of the government prisons, laying off a million government employees at the federal and state level, and giving back hundreds of billions in tax dollars currently being used for the government prison complex?

<comment><USER41> As soon as we end The Drug War.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> So Bill Clinton says in the video: "We overdid it at putting in too many young, non-violent offenders in jail for too long."

Not "We", Bill. You did that. I hate it when presidents can get away with their actions by just a few words.

<comment><USER17> Please explain how Clinton did that alone. Be sure to explain away Regan, Bush Sr., the Justice Department, the War on Drugs, Three-Strikes laws, and just about everyone else down the chain that instituted those policies. Also explain away the tough-on-crime atmosphere in the 80s and 90s that started these policies, the undertone of institutionalized racism, and be sure to end with how nothing has changed through today, despite a decade of understanding how terrible the entire thing was.

<comment><USER49> Plural "you." Clinton is part of the establishment that did this. GP & I are not.

<comment><USER17> Still disagree. The country wanted this and bought into this. They voted in "tough on crime" mayors, governors, congress people, and yes, presidents for years - decades, even. It started before I could vote, and maybe before you could, but this wasn't some faceless elite "establishment" \- it was the whoooole country.

<comment><USER50> A whole lot of people seem eager to ignore that America arrived where it is today based on tens of millions of voters repeatedly deciding who runs their governments. As if they were the first citizens to look around and find themselves wholly dissatisfied with the state of government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I agree there are apparently huge problems with private prisons. But I don't see any reason to believe the government can run them better or cheaper.

Why not simply demand the standards we want from the private contractors running the prisons, as a contingency to get paid or renewed?

That would require actual oversight, and is probably less fun for people like Sally Yates than having a convenient scapegoat to justify expansion of the Bureau of Prisons.

<comment><USER52> They weren't being run any better or cheaper as far as the government/tax payer was concerned. They were cheaper for the corporation. Minimal training, safety, health and food standards. Pocket the difference and charge the government the full rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Sadly its likely being done to score election points with minorities who they will claim are unfairly treated by the "private prison industry" which actually is more truthful if portrayed as the union prison industry which contributes to the party that will portray otherwise

<comment><USER54> Nope, Obama and his DoJ have made criminal justice reform part of their platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I kinda feel people make too much of private prisons and far too little of the heinous things that have been done in their names by government-run and managed prisons. For any one truly interested in questioning the whole idea of putting _some_ people that some other people deem a menace into (super expensive) cages, I recommend reading "Are Prisons Obsolete?" [http://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp- content/uploads/2010/...](http://www.feministes-radicales.org/wp- content/uploads/2010/11/Angela-Davis-Are_Prisons_Obsolete.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER56> These are truly awesome news. Obviously there is the broken system itself that gets improved (let's not pretend that it will be _fixed_ instantly). But aside from that, showing that politics can actually fix something, which everybody sees is so obviously broken, is really important. That is how politicians can regain trust and bring a society back together. Because what happens when a society has lost trust and is anxious can be watched right now all over Europe and America: populism, hatred and extremism.

</comment><comment><USER57> Eh... the Justice Department will be under new management in less than six months. Nothing they say about policy going forward really means much.

</comment><comment><USER58> I wonder how much a private prison could pay a person to commit a crime that would land them in prison and still be profitable for the prison and the prisoner...

Would be a win win gamble. Steal a car. If you don't get caught you keep the car. If you get caught, collect money from the private prison. Private prison collects from the state...

ofcourse it could go wrong.

<comment><USER59> homeless people might be up for it. Special wing with friendlier guards for the volunteer criminals?

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Does anyone know whether this DOJ order also covers the facilities used for detaining undocumented immigrants?

<comment><USER61> I think it might. The article mentioned that one response by companies was that the conclusion of the report was not supported by the evidence because some of their prisons primarily contained non-citizens, and that population had different problems. I'm not really sure how the government decides to place undocumented immigrants though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Good start! I just wish this change would be happening for the right reasons, e.g. that privately held prisons are creating a false incentive, an incentive to be more profitable by having more prisoners and thus the creation of a lobby for such thing.

<comment><USER43> If you look, I think you'll find very little evidence of that actually happening. Further, state-run prisons create as much if not more incentive, in the form of public sector unions.

<comment><USER26> It is curious how overlooked the money unions dump into lobbying is. They are spending massive amounts of money lobbying DC, but nobody seems to talk about it. The people that complain about companies who run private prisons lobbying congress never have a thought for say, the corrections officers' union, doing the same. Why?

<comment><USER63> Unions generally represent a large collection of human beings who all donate a small fixed amount as dues, and are usually quasi-democratic. That is, unions closer resemble the expression of the will of actual people, whereas non-union corporate lobbying represents the interests of a single corporate leader choosing to spend a huge amount of money to obtain influence in the democratic process wildly out of proportion to his actual vote.

A teacher's union lobbying is acting in the interest of millions of American teachers. An oil company lobbying is acting in the interest of the CEO of the oil company.

<comment><USER64> > A teacher's union lobbying is acting in the interest of millions of American > teachers. An oil company lobbying is acting in the interest of the CEO of > the oil company.

Both are incorrect characterizations. In theory, the actions of a union represent the interests of its members and the actions of a corporation represent the actions of its shareholders. In practice, the actions of both represent their boards' interpretation of what their members/shareholders want and what they think is in the best interests of their corporations[1]. Neither represents either the collective will of all its members or the whims of a single person.

[1] Unions in the US are 501(c) corporations and so have similar governing structures.

<comment><USER63> Not true; they are quite correct characterizations.

In theory, union officials are elected by the members of the union. In practice, union officials are elected by the members of the union. In theory, the head of a corporation is the head of a corporation and may do whatever he likes so long as he and a small cabal of directors wish. In practice, the very few executives at the top of a large corporation run it like a dictatorship, and they primarily serve their own interests -- not the interests of the employees or the shareholders. And even when they do act in the interest of shareholders, that's simply a code word for "a tiny group of wealthy elites" \-- shareholders are wealth holders, so invariably even the most honest and earnest CEO will be acting in the interest of large amounts of wealth (oligarchy), not large amounts of people (democracy).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> The only way they can do this is because federal private prison industry isn't that big, there's not that much money flowing into politicians' pockets for it. Good luck trying to pry state leaders' hands off it.

</comment><comment><USER66> I thought it would be useful to post a link to a list of all the private prisons in the United States, but I can't seem to find one online anywhere. Is anyone aware of such a list?

</comment><comment><USER67> Good, if this is something that the UK will take notice of. We picked up this practice from the US some time ago and the performance has always been controversial.

</comment><comment><USER68> [Redacted for not towing the party line close enough.]

<comment><USER69> I would think a government run prison would be more amenable to public pressure to reform and change, as opposed to a free market solution.

<comment><USER70> That doesn't help if the public doesn't care, and for decades there was no public pressure to reform any prison, public or private. Now that criminal justice reform is mainstream, private prisons have received a disproportionate amount of public attention, enough for the feds to phase them out. I hope the newfound criminal justice reformers don't declare victory as soon as private prisons are gone. Never forget that over-criminalization and mass incarceration preceded private prisons, not the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> WE have got. To think and act WITH our intuitive minds....We must use what God and the Universe HAS given Us to truly discern Good from Evil..and STOP playing we are still Blind

</comment><comment><USER72> > Yates said the Justice Department would not terminate existing contracts but > instead review those that come up for renewal. She said all the contracts > would come up for renewal over the next five years.

Which means that over the next five years, the govt. will continue to use facilities that "are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government," and with no real cost benefit.

<comment><USER73> Instantly replacing everything would require:

* Paying out a large number of contracts which have cancellation clauses (don't complain too much about these, the companies at the other end of the contract made good faith investments due to them) * Quickly finding people to handle all of those prisons

Alternatively you can simply let each individual contract fail to renew which allows you to take your time finding replacements for everything you need.</comment></comment>


Introducing Page Speed - <AUTHOR> http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/06/introducing-page-speed.html <comment><USER2> I just tried this. It has a lot of overlap with YSlow, but there are some interesting extra rules in it, most notably a rule that finds inefficient CSS selectors. That's kind of cool.

<comment><USER3> These tools (like YSlow) are oh so interesting when your clients install them in their browser and examine the site you built for them. Now, I'll get to hear complaints that we used too many inefficient CSS selectors (and that we're incompetent), ignoring the fact that a .0003 millisecond makes no difference to the client's website. It's not Google's fault, but I just had to sigh when I saw some of the rules (I'll expect a call by tomorrow haha). :-)

<comment><USER4> I could actually see it working in the other direction. Things like YSlow highlight good technique in a (seemingly) objective way.

As for your issue, I would hope that if a client is savvy enough to check with these tools, they could also understand when you tell them what is important and what is not.

<comment><USER5> I find that my smartest clients have the capability of being the most annoying but usually just demand more explanation out of me. And while sometimes they take that to the extreme (where it's smarter to limit your interaction) its usually for the best because in teaching I find I learn a lot more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Was I the only person who was a little surprised that they didn't mention YSlow by name? That strikes me as somewhat rude, though I know Yahoo and Google aren't exactly best buddies.

 _Edit_ : Looks like some of the commenters there agree with me on that point.

</comment><comment><USER7> One annoying thing with this thing is that it creates a bunch of dirs in your home dir and dumps stuff in them when performing the analysis. Shouldn't they put things like that in /tmp, if they need to store them at all?

<comment><USER8> Just noticed that, rather annoying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I look forward to seeing some comparisons of this to YSlow

<comment> brown9-2 Seems to have some overlap as mentioned in other comments - buy why the need to compare the two? Why not just add both to your toolbox and gain the features of both?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It looks really useful. Much more than Yslow, and Yslow is great too. I posted an example <http://dodeja.posterous.com/762803> It even gives images that are optimized and JS that is minified. Developers <3 Google

</comment><comment><USER10> I also liked the specific action items. Like which exact css selector is inefficient. Also liked it called out the exact images that could do with compression, what % can be gained and even a sample compressed image!

</comment><comment><USER11> You may also want to try this: <http://www.webpagetest.org/test>

Pretty charts, and pretty good diagnostic.

(Health warning: knowing how much junk is spewing down the wire from some sites may turn your stomach ...)

</comment><comment><USER12> Anyone else finds it funny that Google releases a Firefox add-on?

</comment><comment><USER13> Wouldn't it be interesting if Google started applying a bias to search results, pushing fast sites up the list?

I would definitely appreciate that option. I _hate_ slow web sites.

<comment><USER14> I think they do already have a bias towards faster websites, but as with everything else with google it's only speculation as things constantly change with these guys.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure Google needs to cook that book. People like faster websites, so they'll get more link love, so they'll probably rise up of their own accord.

If I'm searching for something to link to - often a news story, if I'm writing for the datablog we run - then I'm going to open five stories in tabs and probably pick whichever one finishes loading fastest.

<comment><USER13> Yes, I agree - I really value a fast-loading website, and am very annoyed if the site I clicked on takes forever to load.

Your theory that it could happen naturally is interesting, but I don't see it working in practise - ie, I don't notice any correllation between pagerank and site response time. I am sure Google et al have the resources to measure it in a reasonably non-game-able fashion; I'd certainly welcome such a development.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook launching Facebook Places (check-ins) - <AUTHOR> http://apps.facebook.com/facebooklive

<comment><USER2> Rod Begbie asked a great question at the top of the Q&A... "How do I take down the address of my home if it gets listed and becomes popular such that FB makes it public?" (FB said that popular locations become public if enough people check in, so imagine you are having a party at your house...).

The answer is you can't, and Facebook clearly hadn't thought of that in their user stories and use cases. The group on stage didn't seem to feel it was an issue either.

For all of Chris Cox's pretentious guff ( _dude, give me a break_ ) about their interest in sociology and FB respecting the "3rd place" concept, I think it shows how out of touch with "IRL" issues FB product development is. I feel they see everything as a 'data problem to solve' not the people + human behaviors that are really going on.

<comment><USER3> Imagine how bad it would be if someone's "Having coffee at work" tweet/facebook message was public!! Then people could look up their name in the phone book and rob them!

Oh wait.. even worse! Imagine if everyone worked basically the same hours - then people could predict when your house is likely to be empty and rob them!!

Oh wait.. we already have that. Better panic already I guess.

<comment><USER4> First, we don't have it on the scale of Facebook yet.

Second, everyone knows their Twitter/FourSquare posts are going to be public. Not so with FB.

Third, Facebook is the one with the established reputation of making public by default user information that many assume to be private.

I think the point is less about telling people that you're away and more about publicly broadcasting the location of _other people's_ private information.

I can assure you I'm not a privacy nut, but I think we all have the right to keep the latitude and longitude of our homes hidden from 500 million other people if we want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some facts to think about:

a) Marc Andreessen is on the board of Facebook. b) Facebook started working on this 8 months ago. c) Foursquare had turned down acquisition offers from FB d) Andreessen and Horowitz invested in Foursquare ~ 2 months ago.

Not saying that Andreessen wouldn't want to have a hedge going on, but if there were complete certainty that FB places would crush 4sq in his mind, they wouldn't have invested.

<comment><USER6> True. FourSquare is also still in a position where they can pivot.

The facebook status updates didn't kill twitter, but I think twitter became more of marketing tool than a tool to communicate with friends. Maybe that's just me, but I think competing with FB forces a company to focus on where they can compete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Surprised that Foursquare and Gowalla actually took part in this.

The underlying data they have on location and check-ins is basically being given to Facebook. That means that the only real value left in those apps is what they have to offer on top of that, which is not super defensible, whereas Facebook gets to be the underlying platform where there is real value.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like they're doing this to avoid being totally overthrown by the incumbent. They're picking the better of 2 bad situations.

<comment><USER9> I upvoted you, but was your mom on Facebook 3, 4, 5 years ago when it wasn't what it is today?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You will apparently be able to opt out of being tagged in someone else's checkin, and the default privacy of a checkin is friends only. I have been critical of facebook's privacy policy, but this is promising.

...until they change the default, as they did with name, photo, friends, work history, education history, likes, interests, activities, and others to globally public with no privacy setting.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Does anyone else find this live coverage ("Live from Facebook HQ!") with interviews on-site with the developers a little ... weird?

Does any other site out there offer live coverage of their own feature announcements?

<comment><USER7> Wolfram Alpha did. Apparently nobody told them they were launching a website, not a spaceship.

<comment><USER11> But they would argue that the impact on humanity is greater than sending men in space for science. ;-p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When will it just run in the background, so it'll tell me when I happen to be within 400 yards of a friend in NYC? Now that would be cool.

<comment><USER13> I upvoted you because I agree and disagree. I agree because it would be totally cool if we both wanted that. It would be totally annoying if one of us actually wished to be private at that moment, or was in a rush, etc, and just forgot to turn off facebook.

<comment><USER14> I totally see why this is a fear. But actually I don't see a feature like this causing these kind of problems. How is it any different than receiving a text when you are busy or running into someone you know when you don't have time to chat. Everyone has times when they are busy and everyone has times when they aren't busy and want to be social.

<comment><USER13> I guess it's just like bumping into someone that you know when you don't have time to chat - but with a 50-fold increase in the radius of my personal sphere. I'd definitely give it a shot, at least, to see if I liked it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is it possible that check-ins are just a fad? Can you imagine doing check-ins for the next 10 years, or for the next 30 years?

<comment><USER16> I think in their current form (game-ish) they are.

But attaching useful information to real life, that's not, it's just one of the sides of a future internet of things, and I believe that is where we are headed.

<comment><USER15> Sure - I think Twitter annotations might see some innovative uses in the future. Just not sure if we need an extra app+hype for every category of likeable things.

In fact, why not give everything a URL and be done with it (then the like button would suffice). Maybe that is what is really happening and 4sq et al are just domain grabbing schemes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Kudos to them. This feature was just a matter of time.

In addition to the growing popularity of 4square-like services, exchanging contact info w/new people at events & places has become less "What's your number?" to "Are you on Facebook?". This feature will make that sort of interaction much easier.

</comment><comment><USER18> Bye bye FourSquare...

<comment><USER19> What's the history for Facebook squashing competition?

<comment><USER3> MySpace, Friendster, Orkut, Hi5, Bebo. I'm sure there are others that I'm missing.

They have played pretty hard in the virtual currency area too (although if anyone really thought they'd be able to build a business in that area on Facebook then I've got a bridge to sell you)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm not so sure they're going to crush 4Square or Gowalla. Facebook is for wasting time -- idle messaging, playing Farmville. Mobile checkin apps are sort of the opposite of that. I don't doubt that 4Square users will connect to FB and start publishing their data (and if they decide to do that instead of polluting Twitter with it, awesome), but who is the target audience for pulling out the FB app on iPhone/Android and checking in somewhere?

<comment><USER21> I disagree. I see a ton of status updates from mobile devices by non-tech friends, and hardly any of those friends use 4s or Gowalla.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great, now except quizzes and quotes and YouTube videos posted on my "News Feed", I'll have check-ins too!

Okay, maybe that was little ironic. Glad to see Facebook advancing on other fields too, and as for those check-ins on my feed, I'll click hide on those people who check-in every 15 minutes :)

And glad to see that they aren't kicking out the competition, but partnering with them!

</comment><comment><USER23> Geo has so much potential and it looks like Facebook is working super hard to integrate this in a useful way. Checking in just to say "I'm at X" is just not interesting. Making location a part of a story (party, vacation, location where picture was taken...) is much more interesting and I can see it work out great if they find out how to tackle that. Their approach is very good, IMHO.

That being said, it seems like Facebook is building a record of me without me knowing, that I have no insight in. Friends tag me in pictures and tag my location now, too. That information is shown to various circles of friends. Now I'm not sure who knows what about me know since I neither created the information, nor had any part in sharing it. I suppose this reflects the real world in some way (people can talk about you whenever they want), it's just amplified in a major way.

Very interesting and intriguing indeed.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm beginning to think that this is what Lanier's "digital maoists" are all about.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm still wondering how all of this location based talk even arose between Gowalla and FourSquare...I feel bad for BrightKite, which was around at least a year before these two.

</comment><comment><USER26> Doesn't show up for me. Not on touch site and not on the iphone app either. Anyone else having this issue?

I'm thinking it's because until recently I had my account set to a different language (I've been late to receive updates because of this before), but I am acatually in the US.

<comment><USER27> Not at 100% of US immediately

<comment><USER26> Doesn't say that anywhere--just says "Places is only available in the United States right now"

EDIT: TC has updates from fb on it: <http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/18/facebook-places-iphone-2/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's not showing up in the "Updates" section of the App Store yet, but if you go to the Facebook page in the App Store you can install the update. The Places feature seems to be "unavailable" for a lot of people right now though as they roll it out on the backend.

</comment><comment><USER28> It would be nice if the write API was available, but at least we'll be able to get the read-only stuff into Locurious before the next update goes out :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Here's the blogpost from fcbk:

<http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/403>

</comment><comment><USER30> No mention of Loopt?

</comment><comment><USER31> Great, another way for creepy Facebook to know more about me!

I think Facebook has jumped the shark. I have a couple of hundred contacts on FB, and the activity levels are way low compared to what they used to be.</comment>


Why is AWS documentation so poor? - <AUTHOR> So I've been using AWS technologies every day over the past 4 years. I find there is a consistent pattern with AWS documentation, its filled with detail but hard to sift through it all to find the details that actually matter. Speaking to my coworkers, it seems everyone has the same feeling.
I decided to do something about this and dedicate a youtube channel to give detailed walkthroughs using AWS technologies. I'm making a special effort to focus on the numerous options that are presented and explain what they mean, while giving special emphasis to the settings you should probably pay attention to.
I started this channel of with two videos:
1) SNS to Lambda Trigger walkthrough - https://youtu.be/PsJsP-7cydk
2) SQS to Lambda Trigger walkthrough - https://youtu.be/JJQrVBRzlPg
I'm going to be posting new videos fairly regularly. I'm open to feedback, comments, or suggested topics. Any support is appreciated.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Everything at Amazon and AWS is done by two-pizza teams. Everything.

Each team is expected to be largely self-supporting.

That includes UI, documentation, everything.

They can leverage the work of other teams, if they choose.

Once the product has been created, it is then up to them to get the word out about their product in order to get other teams to use it.

So, there is a huge discoverability problem in just finding out what tools exist and what they do.

And each team is largely responsible for policing themselves on compliance with standards, or figuring out what best practices are and then adhering to them.

So, how many employees does Amazon and AWS have? How many two-pizza teams can you create from those numbers?

How many two-pizza teams would you have to have before you start having duplication of effort — or schizophrenic implementation of differing interpretations of standards?

<comment><USER3> > two-pizza

What does this mean? The size of a team that 2 pizzas can feed?

<comment><USER4> yup, exactly. Which can vary wildly. I used to eat a pizza by myself, and now I limit myself to two slices. And a guy on my team does not like pizza. I find it better to just say 5-9 members.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I dunno. AWS documentation covers complicated systems. Sometimes that means that the docs are complicated. I have found them to be thorough. Only issue I have is that search is awful, but using Google fixes that.

If you want high level docs, have you looked at the well architected framework?

[https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/well- architected/](https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/well-architected/)

I guess I am missing something. Can you point me to some docs that are done well (in your opinion)?

<comment><USER6> Having worked with both, Azure's documentation tends to be very well maintained.

<comment><USER7> Also working with both, I often find that Azure's docs mainly focus on basic tasks and leave out the more advanced, which makes them good but incomplete. AWS, on the other hand, I have found to be more complete, documenting more features of the platform, but they are not always as clear as Azure's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The AWS docs annoy me SO MUCH. As others have noted, there is a LOT of them, and they cover every feature. But I cant think of any of them that explain how stuff works. There will be three different versions explaining how to set some option with cli, sdk, and console versions...but they never explain what that option actually does. The examples are always at the tutorial level (there are so many * in IAM permissions in their docs). For something that is so very much a professional product where the details are important, their docs should really have the more in depth details. Like what are the tradeoffs with Aurora? How exactly do the load balancers handle connections and scaling? What does the "certificate" option in codebuild do?

</comment><comment><USER9> Documentation is one of the few "open" area of amazon: [https://github.com/awsdocs](https://github.com/awsdocs)

Since it is their job, probably technical writers fix documentation tickets? Which documentation specifically are you refering to as "poor"?

Videos are a useful complement (thanks!) to documentation, but may not be enough to replace it, especially as reference (for details).

Different users need different documentations: tutorial, reference, specifications, architecture,...

<comment><USER9> Also, a LOT a video material [https://www.youtube.com/user/AmazonWebServices/](https://www.youtube.com/user/AmazonWebServices/)

Difficulty is probably to find the good ones.

<comment><USER10> AWS also seems to have good SEO on their docs, so it becomes hard to search for answers from other sources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My cynical opinion is that companies have little incentive to fix their documentation because if the documentation is poor the client is more likely to pay for a consultant from the company for support, or for a higher support tier.</comment>


Coding Interview Cheatsheet - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yangshun/tech-interview-handbook/blob/master/preparing/cheatsheet.md <comment><USER2> As far as a general behavior checklist, this one is fairly accurate in my interviewer experience. It is surprising how often candidates do many of the "Don'ts" in the list.

In the end, I'm looking for candidates I can see myself working with. If we were to pair up on a task or project, I want to be reasonably sure I'm not going to dread the event; I should look forward to it.

One example was a candidate from one of the Big 4. He was having trouble in Java (his preferred language) handling 400 and 500 level errors in an HTTP request that was part of the interview problem. I told him at the beginning that he can use whatever resources he wants, etc. I also told him that I am not a Java person but would help him where I could (we are not a Java shop). While he was reading documentation, I googled how to handle the errors, and said something along the lines of, "it looks like you should be able to do such-n-such with whatever class's method." He just said, "no." A few minutes later, still stuck, I suggested that he give it a try. "That's not how that works." We had to eventually skip the error handling to get back on track.

What I got out of that part of our interaction was that he wouldn't likely be pleasant to work with. He could have said why my proposal would not work or anything beyond simply dismissing my attempt to help. I got the distinct feeling of, "this guy is kind of a jerk." He was applying for a senior developer position. Part of that role would be mentorship and leveling up your team (this was explained early on in the process, before the on site). With our limited time together, he did not convey anything of the sort.

Post interview, he mentioned to our interview organizer / in-house recruiter that it was apparent I did not understand Java development. Post interview, I also took his submitted code and implemented my suggestion and it worked.

In short, I think much of the post's checklist is accurate. Behavior during an interview counts. It is not just technical aptitude.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if that's the reason why he wasn't at one of the big 4 anymore :)

<comment><USER4> But he did end up there somehow in there first place. What was his interview them like, I wonder?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Defensive coding. Check for nulls, empty collections, etc.

While this is important to avoid bugs in your algorithm, I've had candidates who spent way too long on this and it comes across as inexperienced. I don't really care that you know how to check null-ness, if you just mention "assume the parameter is not null", it's more than sufficient to me.

<comment><USER6> Which is why the best thing is to ask. I always tell my candidates that the most important thing is how they approach the problem and not how careful they are with their coding. However, if the interviewer doesn't explain that, the best thing is not to do "Defensive Coding" as per the linked article, but instead to _ask_.

<comment><USER7> I think it's be better if interviewers and interviewees wrote code like they would in the job - no excessive commenting/checking ... just write effective, clean concise code and minimize time wasted

In reality it might be risky to do this, but I'd like to see that change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would rather coding interviews went like this.

Give the candidates a non-trivial problem, which might take a few days to complete. Everything documented and checked into github. Call them for interviews and review design/code with them. Make sure it was not all copy- pasta and someone else didn't write it for them.

To make sure of that, introduce a slight variation in spec and ask them to do it on the spot.

This way, you get to review their entire development process, How they approach problems, code quality, unit tests, code performance , usage of source control system, CI/CD usage etc. At this point you will know for sure if you want them or not (They might also know they want to work for you or not .. :-). )

<comment><USER9> Sounds like a great way to filter people who have other responsibilities, or are an attractive enough candidate to be busy interviewing for other firms.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely. I second that. I would be willing to spend a couple of hours on an interview task, which could give the interviewer an idea about my skills, but more than that I would see as an overkill. Besides, in my view, showing some OS repos on GitHub can be a good alternative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A couple small touches that have helped me power through these interviews:

\- Food intake prior to the interview. If I get phone interviews later in the day, especially after lunch, I avoid eating heavy and greasy food that can put me in a food coma. It has negatively impacted my performance in a couple of interviews back during my college days. Controlling my caffeine consumption before an interview helps too. I had a pretty bad "crash" in one of my onsites.

\- If I'm expected to do puzzle questions, it's best for me to warm up 45 mins before the interview just to get my mind in a problem solving state.

</comment><comment><USER12> >Stay calm and composed.

Ironically, reading this makes me hyperaware.

>Sound enthusiastic! Speak with a smile and you will naturally sound more engaging.

In my experience, some people force this and it comes off a bit creepy. I've had better luck not thinking about this.

IMHO don't treat the social side the same way you treat the technical side (i.e. preparation similar to homework). The social side should not be overly deliberate. Don't overthink it, just be polite.

<comment><USER13> You're right, I feel like a lot of stuff on this list will just cause overthinking. Just be yourself, don't be weird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't all this just common sense? It basically says "be a nice person to communicate with". But split up into a huge table of checks and crosses.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but you'd be surprised how many candidates either get too nervous or are too shy to do most of these.

Phone interviews are hard to begin with but you also have a lot of flexibility so it's less stressful, but in-person interviews with real programming on a computer can put many into a really stressed state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Should add: spend effort making lots of industry friends and contacts. Tell them you're looking for a job. Skip coding interview.

<comment><USER17> Coding interview is a very elemental part. You can deffo skip phone interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This document is new but here's a discussion of the repo from a couple weeks ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15341566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15341566)

</comment><comment><USER15> We do a lot of technical interviews and have seen enough candidates skip on many of these, so in that respect I like that there is a list they can reference. However, doing for the sake of following a list can come off as inexperienced/dishonest (or creepy, like one of the comments suggested).

Having seen those first hand as well I can tell you I really dislike such interviews and that they always make me and whoever else is interviewing with me uncomfortable.

My advice is to go through this list and reflect on your last interview. What did you do, what didn't you do, why? And try to practice some of the things you didn't.

Also, keep in mind some of these are double edged swords. Example, speaking with enthusiasm. Don't do it at all and you'll be boring everyone, but do it too much and you'll look like you can't concentrate.

Practice makes perfect, so work on it.

</comment><comment><USER6> One thing that's missing here is video camera feed. As an interviewer, I don't turn on my webcam and I don't expect the candidate to do it (although they can if they want to). However, I've heard different people have different opinions on this. It's definitely something that could go on this list for phone interviews.

Of course, intra-US interviews are usually done over the phone but when the interviews are across countries, tools such as Google Hangouts are normally used.

<comment><USER19> This seems quite odd to me. I work with people remotely and on site, and it's amazing how much better communication is when both parties turn their webcam on. Body language conveys things that tone, and words don't

<comment><USER20> > communication is when both parties turn their webcam on

Not least because the individuals concerned can't goof off doing something else at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Probabaly the most concise list of useful tips I've seen since I started interviewing at the big four. Yes to all.

</comment><comment><USER22> I can't think of any other field where highly paid adult professionals willingly submit to interviews that treat them like autistic 15-year-olds. Makes sense for the companies, of course.

<comment><USER23> I've interviewed a fair number of programmers over the years. There's a surprising number of people who interview well and who have good resumes, but who can't actually code. (By "can't code", I mean, "Can't sum an array of numbers in their favorite programming language.") And checking references is hit-or-miss in the US, where many employers will only confirm title and dates of employment.

I know of three possible ways to evaluate coding ability:

1\. Ask coding questions in interviews. This is biased against people with performance anxiety.

2\. Give people take-home "work samples". This uses up more of a candidate's time, and it may filter out high performers with multiple offers. Plus, if you give anything that takes more than a few hours, it really ought to be paid.

3\. Ask for a GitHub profile with open source contributions. This is biased against people who leave work at work, or whose previous employers don't contribute to open source projects.

It's been a few years since I last interviewed candidates, but if I were designing the interview process, I'd probably want at least one of the above before hiring a candidate. Maybe the candidate could choose? "If you have public open source contributions, please submit a link and a description. If you don't, no worries! We'll can do a coding test instead."

<comment><USER24> Why not let candidates choose between 1,2 and 3?

<comment><USER25> Because then it is hard to have a consistent and fair method of judging candidates.

<comment><USER24> Seems like you can't compare even if you stick to one method. Some people have performance anxiety or social anxiety and can't do 1. Others thrive on 1.

<comment><USER7> You might want to filter out those people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Ask about your interview performance. It can get awkward." Maybe it's just me, but I always find that to ask for/give feedback is better(if asked), as recruiters almost never respond if you have not cleared the round and if there is opportunity to give feedback so that candidate has an idea on what to work on.

Also I have found that when asking for feedback, it can lead to interesting discussions which might make the interviewer change his/her mind.

This of course is personal preference...

<comment><USER27> One of the problems is you are not likely to get truly honest feedback. That opens things up to dispute, and that puts the interviewer in an awkward position: if they cannot articulate a point properly, even if valid, the interviewee is left feeling they should have "passed". In the worst case, they could claim the interviewer was prejudiced against them and file a labor dispute or lawsuit.

It's also often highly subjective, for example:

"I don't think you demonstrated the depth of knowledge in (technology x) we're looking for in this position"

"Well I've developed several applications that work, so clearly I do know it"

What you can do along the way is ask questions like "Would you like me to elaborate on that?" or "did I answer your question adequately?" if you get the sense you may not have. For code, the list on the page is actually decent - ask up front about the assumptions, how much you should focus on defensive coding, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > There were times I had to restart Chrome to get Hangouts to work again.

Yes, this seems to be a generalized problem

</comment><comment><USER29> This fixes the wrong problem. Has anyone seen a whiteboard managing interview for IT managers?

</comment><comment><USER30> > Immediately announce that you are done coding.

Why?

<comment><USER31> Because if you immediately announce that you are done coding, you cannot do any of the other things on the list, which are all good ideas. After you've done them all, you should announce you are ready. It's probably a good idea to tell the interviewer what you are doing, don't just stand there looking at your code in silence if you can avoid it.</comment></comment>


Finding the Best Chicago Pizza in San Francisco - <AUTHOR> http://shamurai.tumblr.com/post/2370000847/chicagopizza

<comment><USER2> I find it interesting that Patxi's rated better than Zachary's, since Patxi's is a spinoff. I've eaten at both and I think they're pretty much the same, tho I've never had them side by side. If you're in the bay area, both are worth the trip.

</comment><comment><USER3> Chicago style pizza (both kinds) is overrated. You want to impress us, find an italian beef in San Francisco that stacks up to Johnnie's or Mr. Beef.

Meanwhile: so much of pizza quality is in how it's cooked --- you absolutely need ridiculous heat to turn out a decent crust --- I can't imagine how anything shipped cross-country could ever hope to rate.

<comment><USER4> Is temperature really an issue for deep dish? I know for a thin crust pizza you need to get above 750 or so to even be in the game, but I always thought a deep dish pizza was cooked at a lower temp to keep the top from carbonizing before the interior had cooked.

<comment><USER3> Dammit. Investigating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Finding the Best Chicago Pizza in Chicago: Go to Pequod's.

<comment><USER6> Probably get downvoted for this, but as a longtime resident of Chicago who literally lives on the same block as Giordano's, why anyone would look for Chicago-style pizza anywhere, including Chicago, is beyond me.

As good as San Francisco's baking culture is, surely there's NY-style (real! :)) pizza to be had?

<comment><USER7> _As good as San Francisco's baking culture is, surely there's NY-style (real! :)) pizza to be had?_

There isn't. Also, you won't find a good bagel anywhere in the bay area. I spent most of last summer looking.

<comment><USER8> Damn, really? I've been craving a good bagel shop since I moved out here.

<comment><USER7> If you're looking for a place where you can grab half a dozen bagels on Saturday morning, you're out of luck. Your best bet is to try out some of the smaller cafe's near where you live and hope they toast bagels okay[1].

There's "The Bagel Bakery" up in SOMA that has almost decent bagels. But its way too out of the way to get a few bagels for the weekend.

1\. For me, this was Nervous Dog Coffee down in Bernal Heights (30th-ish and Mission). Take a look on yelp for cafe's. Ignore the ratings, since they'll be based on the coffee they serve, not bagels.

<comment><USER9> +1 for the Bagel Bakery. Our office is next door, and it's a struggle not to get lunch there every single day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I lived in Chicago for 22 years and had my fair share of deep dish growing up, Lou's in particular because we had one not more than five minutes away.

This is total blasphemy as a Chicago native, but I think Paxti's is the best deep dish I've ever had.

Although this test should be taken with a grain of salt, there is no comparison between Lou's fresh out of their oven and the shipped, frozen variety.

</comment><comment><USER11> As a self-titled pizza connoisseur you really can't compare different types of pizzas with one another. i think this article showed us a pretty good taste test. i've tried both zachary's and little star in the area (though i live in la). i'll have to give patxi's a try. i've also been to chicago and tried lou's, uno's and gino's. Lou's is my favorite.

I love all pizza though, the italian styles from naples to sicilian to the U.S. branches from wood fired california style to thin crust new york to chicago deep dish. they all have a fair place in my book and i have a favorite for each category but to compare one against another is a little awkward.

awesome read!

</comment><comment><USER12> I live in SF, followed this link to make sure that Patxi's is indeed the best Chicago style Pizza in the city. Lo and behold, it is. I'm not surprised, because their pizza really is the best I've seen outside of Chicago.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting; I've always preferred Little Star (in SF). I guess I just have an attachment to their cornmeal crust, I think it holds up better than the ones from the other places. (Although, I might just be down-rating Zachary's a bit harshly from the unpleasantness of the restaurant(s) themselves.)

However, overall, I would rate Lou's my favorite. I'd heard about the "frozen- shipping" method, good to know it doesn't end up with the best results before I try it.

</comment><comment><USER14> A very short guide to Chicago Pizza in Seattle: For many years there has been Wallingford Street Pizza... similar to Giordanos: cheap ingredients, incredibly cheesy, somewhat classic. Now there's Kylie's Pizza, a more natural cornmeal-laden crust and fresh ingredients style, more analogous to Edwardo's in Chicago. Very impressive.

</comment><comment><USER15> First, Chicago pizza is not pizza it some sort of Midwestern casserole.

That said, if you haven't had pizza from Burt's out in Morton Grove you're not allowed to enter the judging. Outside of that, my favorites are Pequod's, The Art of Pizza (on Ashland) and Nancy's (specifically from the one just north of Diversey on Broadway)

</comment><comment><USER8> Science calls for repeatable results... I would be happy to volunteer for your future studies.

</comment><comment><USER16> How about a sample of the comments? It'd be nice to know _why_ Paxti's got the highest rating instead of just seeing some numbers.

</comment><comment><USER17> Chicago pizza is indeed the best, with a shout-out to Bill's Pub, Il Forno, and Gino's East, but setting aside all the sports-team-style posturing, it's all about trying a boatload of different places till you find your favorite.

For inspiration, read <http://slice.seriouseats.com/tags/California> or whatever state you happen to live in, eh.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow lots of downvoting from people who don't like Chicago pizza...

</comment><comment><USER18> Fuck yeah Patxi's!</comment>


Ask HN: Will you still subscribe to Amazon Prime if they hike the price by $40? - <AUTHOR>

2 day shipping is great, but their streaming service trails behind Netflix in offerings. So, is it worth $119/year? <comment><USER2> I'd be more likely to if they'd actually release an android app for amazon video, or the chromecast. The main devices I use with Netflix simply don't work with Amazon Video, so it's basically useless to me.

Shipping alone is worth <$80 for me. If they can make Amazon Video a more compelling offering, I'd be more likely to.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nope. I unsubscribed when my student price ($40) lapsed and I was bumped up to full price ($80). Looking over my order history told me that (a) I don't order much from Amazon and (b) those orders are not time-sensitive. Oh, and Prime Instant Video is worthless.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, because I split the cost with my sister a couple of towns away so it'll still be $50-60 a year. I don't receive the video benefits since I'm not the primary subscriber but Netflix is enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER5> I did subscribe for a year but recently cancelled my subscription.

I now purchase fewer things(nice for an nyc apartment) and get to go outside and interact with the other people in my city.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was planning on unsubscribing. I don't use Prime for video and my family and I don't order enough to take advantage of the cheaper/faster shipping.

</comment><comment><USER7> Definitely. I spend tens of thousands of dollars with Amazon every year for both business and personal purchases. Even at $40 more, its still a fantastic value.

</comment><comment><USER8> Prime is not a replacement for Netflix yet, and I order from Amazon maybe once every 2 months. I'll probably unsubscribe if they do this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not sure - I'd have to do the math on the shipping, because I hardly ever use the streaming service.

</comment><comment><USER10> Most likely. I use Amazon a fair amount and I'd rather not think about shipping costs when trying to buy stuff.

The video collection isn't extensive enough and needs to further grow to really compete with Netflix. But there's some stuff there that Netflix doesn't have so its good to have as a secondary source of entertainment possibilities.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't subscribe now. So a price hike will simply further my unwillingness to subscribe.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yes</comment>


Ask HN: How do you populate a DB to demo your MVC project? - <AUTHOR>

So, you need to demo (or QA) a version of your Django / Rails project.  You run the test suite; all is good.  You promote to your candidate branch and deploy on your staging server.
Now, do you:
* Load a bunch of fixtures?
* Use Factory Boy / Factory Girl (and if so, where is the code that makes it go?)?
* Grab data from your production DB (and if so, how?)?
* Create model instances manually as you go?
* Some other way?
It seems clear to me that fixtures are no longer the way.  If the migration pace is anything but very slow, fixtures become the pain point of staging.  Am I correct here?
My typical approach of late has been factory boy / girl, but this increases the amount of code to test and maintain quite substantially.  Is there a better way? <comment><USER2> What we do is to back up the staging DB, overwrite it with the current production DB, then run the necessary migrations on stage to get the schema up-to-date.

This has a couple of side benefits:

\- "Dry" run of the migrations you'll eventually need to run in production anyway

\- Using real production data in staging/QA (as long as you're allowed to) can uncover some edge cases you wouldn't have accounted for using fixtures or manual prepopulation.</comment>


Where did IE's Browser share go? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/02/internet-explorer-browser-share/

<comment><USER2> Oh, it's so nice to see IE6 finally die. Slow, much too slow, but now everyone can at least see the end.

(Is it realistic to expect IE6 to drop below ten percent by 2011? I sure hope so.)

<comment><USER3> people buying machines with windows 7 helps. but there is a large contingent of corporate ie6 users that will die hard.

<comment><USER4> We'll have to switch to higher-caliber bullets.

<comment><USER5> Statistically IE6 has pissed off so many technically inclined people that I'm really surprised that not a single one of them has written an IE6 crippling virus. It just seems like something that would have already come up. I don't condone it, but people do that kind of thing from time to time.

<comment><USER6> usually smart people try to avoid things that would result in them being put in jail

<comment><USER7> "Technically inclined" != "smart"

Not always, anyhow.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Post Comments Here - <AUTHOR> Please guide me how to comment here, on the posts shared <comment><AUTHOR> I am sorry, I got it after posting this, I need to press the discuss button.</comment>


Show HN: 24 Kisses – Hack your relationship - <AUTHOR> https://24kisses.com/

<comment><USER2> > _We find the best gifts each month to show how much you care._

Apparently, the subscribers of this service are only expected to care about their partner approximately $50/month's worth. Plus whatever small amount initially signing up for this service is worth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Generally, women love receiving gifts just to show you care. $50/month is showing a small token of appreciation, from flowers to gift boxes. It's obviously no substitute for the more thoughtful gifts you may give once or twice a year.

<comment><USER2> Are you not concerned that this might backfire horribly? This is basically _outsourcing_ caring. I can definitely see someone interpreting this as "He doesn't care enough about me to spend time thinking about what I would like."

I don't mean to be shitting all over your business idea; I don't think it's a bad idea, but there are definitely some, uh, marketing problems to be overcome :P

<comment><AUTHOR> I have definitely thought about that and for the most part we'll be sourcing directly through major companies like 1-800-flowers, anthropologie and etsy. And I love the criticism, only way to improve a mvp :)

<comment><USER3> One thing you could do would be to have the purchaser choose from three options (e.g., a bouquet of flowers, a chocolate box + teddy bear, or a wine glass set). While this would make logistics more complex, the end result would be more tailored gifts -- for example, many people are allergic to flowers. If they get a bouquet, they'll question why it was purchased.

And if you solicit feedback after the gift is received, you can start doing some sorts of recommendations. If this user's significant other really liked the wine glasses, maybe next time you have one of the options be a picnic accessories set. If not, you offer more chocolate.

Also, letting the purchaser choose the gift means it's not a surprise to the purchaser when it shows up. This eliminates possible awkwardness where the purchaser doesn't know about the gift.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you've got the right idea, but the way you've set it up will be the fast road to ending many relationships:

It's monthly. How predictable. Small gifts to a special someone only work when it's unpredictable... when you least expect something but when you get something you're surprised. This type of giving isn't best expressed through a Birchbox. The whole part of "You'll get credit for being thoughtful every month" will translate to "You'll remind me how lazy you are each month with this love-as-a-service (LAAS)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is the page background indicative of where one's relationship will soon end up after the other partner finds out? :) [Sorry couldn't help myself!]

On a more constructive note, a generic postcard arriving in mail is pretty lame, if I can have live flowers delivered once a month for around 100 bucks per quarter from numerous established players.

Are you planning to offer any sort of customization/tailoring ala birchbox?

</comment><comment><USER6> You got my interest because the Nth week of every month seems to be reliably bad/depressing for my partner. But I'm not sure what to expect if I subscribe. Have you thought to add a list of things that a subscriber might expect? (I particularly don't want flowers or confections - durable things would be more in line with my value system.)</comment>


Crazy Characters Help Indie Bands Outsmart Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/pl_music_ungoogle/ <comment><USER2> This makes little sense, and the article notably doesn't include any real evidence of a trend of emerging musicians wanting to limit their audience. Maybe it's not "indie" if fans are able to google your name, but this sure seems like a sure-fire way to prevent yourself from actually getting any exposure.</comment>


Swipe right for science: Papr app is 'Tinder for preprints' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/swipe-right-for-science-papr-app-is-tinder-for-preprints-1.22163 <comment><USER2> The idea seems interesting but I can't try it, Papr [0] uses Google to login...

[0] [https://jhubiostatistics.shinyapps.io/papr](https://jhubiostatistics.shinyapps.io/papr)</comment>


One Shellcode To Rule Them All: Cross-Platform Exploitation - <AUTHOR> https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com/blog/cross-platform-exploitation?utm_source=hn

<comment><USER2> Here's a link to the slides: [http://www.slideshare.net/ShaneWilton/one- shellcode-to-rule-...](http://www.slideshare.net/ShaneWilton/one-shellcode-to- rule-them-all)</comment>


The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China - <AUTHOR> https://outline.com/H63avJ <comment><USER2> I actually know someone who got one done in 2006. From what I remember, it was one of those don't ask don't tell deal. However it was understood that the organ came from executed prisoner. It saved her life. I don't know anything about what goes into ensuring donor's organ is a reasonable match, but I'm not too sure if the waiting period for her was that long. Anyway I do remember it became much more difficult for foreigner to get transplant shortly afterwards but this article seems to indicate the trend is reversing with institional practice.

<comment><USER3> I always wondered why Steve Jobs waited around so long for his liver transplant instead of just getting one from China.

And before you say morals don't forget he gamed the waiting list in the US to get the too-late liver and he had no qualms seeing slave labour build his companies products.

<comment><USER4> Steve Jobs didn't need a Chinese organ. He just needed to decide he was ready to get the transplant instead of trying to cure his cancer with a special diet. Once he realized he wasn't curing himself with his diet, he got the transplant quickly because, as you noted, he gamed the system.

<comment><USER3> But once he was on the transplant list he still had to wait and he still gamed it to shorten that wait.

Which makes me wonder why he didn't just get a Chinese liver at that point.

<comment><USER4> Possibly because he didn't want someone killed for his liver. Also it's not clear how long Jobs actually waited. In addition to the geographic system gaming, there was some shady stuff with the doctor who gave Jobs the transplant.

[http://fortune.com/2013/12/08/the-surgeon-who-gave-steve- job...](http://fortune.com/2013/12/08/the-surgeon-who-gave-steve-jobs-a-new- liver-and-two-more-years-faces-new-questions/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _Where are the organs coming from? China claims it has the "largest voluntary organ donation system in Asia" and stopped using prisoners in 2015. But the country has no tradition of voluntary organ donation._

<comment><USER5> _stopped using prisoners in 2015_

"Congratulations, Prisoner #289,349 — you've been paroled. You're no longer a prisoner!"

"You mean I'm free to go?"

"Well, most of you is. Step this way..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting; I had only heard the other day from a bizarre discussion with a Chinese friend who has a family member in government back in China that the price of an organ can increase if the donor is from a clean Christain denomination, because it is feasible that the organs are better kept (ie not an alcoholic, not a drug taker, not a smoker etc) before their donor was deceased.

Supposedly there is a market for the healthiest organs to the highest bidder. I guess they hit the jackpot!

</comment><comment><USER7> There are 36,000 organ transplants performed in the US every year, does anyone know how many occur in China?

<comment><USER8> The article touches on this momentarily:

>In 2010 China's official number of voluntary donors was 34. In 2018 China still had only about 6,000 official organ donors, who are said to donate more than 18,000 organs. Yet the "Bloody Harvest" researchers find that figure is "easily surpassed by just a few hospitals." Tianjin First Center alone performs more than 6,000 transplants a year, and the report's authors "verified and confirmed 712 hospitals which carry out liver and kidney transplants." Dr. Huang claims China will perform the most transplants in the world by 2020—more than America's 40,000 a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I confess I fail to see how outline.com (which is currently where this link leads) is anything but a massive content piracy machine masquerading as some kind of tech startup.

I find it incredibly hard to believe HN would allow submissions of warez sites and links to cracked app downloads, and fail to see the difference between that and the way outline is used here. I get that it's convenient to have free access to paywalled content, just like it's convenient to have free access to tons of cracked apps.

<comment><USER10> If people didn't submit paywalled articles, there would be no use for outline.com, and it wouldn't exist.

While I have no use for paywalled articles, I can't seem to avoid them in my Google searches and fora that I read.

Using outline.com allows me to demonetize the practice from both sides and discourage it.

<comment><USER9> So using warez sites and downloading cracked apps is how you demonetize those who make their living writing software? The economic impact of warez sites and outline.com are the same, they just impact different industries.

<comment><USER10> I have no problem with treating paywall like warez and banning them. The problem I have is that I can't escape paywall like I can warez.

Paywall clogs my search results and my fora even though I don't want it.

Give me a way to never see paywalled results and outline.com will cease to exist for me.

<comment><USER11> "I don't want to pay, but I still want to see it."

Here's your problem. It's not that they exist, it's that you still want the content, for which they are trying to gain an income.

<comment><USER10> Are you all being deliberately obtuse? Quoting myself:

"Give me a way to never see paywalled results and outline.com will cease to exist for me."

I DON'T WANT TO SEE PAYWALLED ARTICLES! AM I MAKING MYSELF CLEAR?

I don't want them in my search results. I don't want them on my fora.

However, if you rudely shove them in my face in Google, HN, Reddit, etc., then please expect that _if_ I read it (and I normally don't) then I _will_ do so in such a way as to prevent you from monetizing your rude behavior.

Is that crystal fscking clear?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Mr. Rogers is East Asia Team Leader at the human-rights organization CSW, deputy chairman of the U.K. Conservative Party's Human Rights Commission

Hm, I wonder what the political motives of the author are.

<comment><USER13> Unless you're suggesting he's part of a grand conspiracy to fabricate this data, I find his politics extremely irrelevant.

<comment><USER14> Why wouldn't he be "part of a grand conspiracy to fabricate this data"? It's called promoting their country's national interests, and it's part of the job description for such roles.

Conspiracy doesn't have to include loonies, aliens, and illuminati. Nation states do conspiracies perfectly well, they just call them "foreign policy", and include presenting the data as they like, painting the pictures to fit the politics of the day, having cosy relations with journalists, getting selective people on the other side (e.g. opposition leaders) to give the kind of statements they like, and so on.

<comment><USER13> Seriously?

"In 2006 Chinese-speaking researchers posed as organ buyers and directly asked if organs from Falun Gong practitioners could be arranged for transplant. Hospitals throughout China confirmed they had such organs available, no problem.

The stories are brutal. Dr. Enver Tohti, a former surgeon from Xinjiang, testified in the British, Irish and European parliaments to removing organs from a prisoner forcibly in 1995. "We had been told to wait behind a hill, and come into the field as soon as we'd hear the gunshot," he recalled. "A moment later there were gunshots. Not one, but many. We rushed into the field. An armed police officer approached us and told me where to go. He led us closer, then pointed to a body, saying, 'This is the one.' By then our chief surgeon appeared from nowhere and told me to remove the liver and two kidneys." According to Dr. Tohti, the man's wound was not necessarily fatal. But Dr. Tohti went ahead and removed the liver and kidneys while the man's heart was still beating.

Experts around the world have testified to China's crimes. Israel, Taiwan and Spain have banned "organ tourism" to China. United Nations rapporteurs have called China to account for the sources of their organs but received no response."

This isn't just some rogue pundit, this is a major geopolitical topic.

I swear, parts of HackerNews recently have been reading more like InfoWars.

<comment><USER14> Well, it can be totally true, and it possibly is. Chinese government did kill and torture several million people during the "Cultural Revolution", so there's that.

But it's not true because some organization or high ranking official couldn't possibly be lying or presenting a fine-tuned picture.

Whole trillion dollar wars were supported on false testimony and lies or exaggerations.

E.g. it could just be part of the "China is suppressing Falun Gong" (including executing prisoners they consider leaders etc, and then using their organs) as opposed to "Chinese are so evil that they routinely kill Falun Gong members just to get their organs" (which I find harder to fathom).

I'm skeptical because a lot of times very official testimonies are very official BS (WMDs, "collision", Nayirah testimony, Iran-Contra, and lotsa others), so bullshitting the population and spinning the media is not some unique habit of undemocratic countries.

E.g. one basic pillar of this China-organ story is the so-called "Kilgour- Matas" report. Matas was on the board of the International Centre for Human Rights & Democratic Development, which is not unknown to controversy itself (basically funding radical organizations and R&D to covertly promote foreign interests out of line with its stated purpose) and was closed down later ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Human...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Human_Rights_and_Democratic_Development#Controversy) ).

<comment><USER13> Fear is the death of reason.

By all means investigate the sources if you wish, but don't peddle conspiracy theories without any actual evidence.

<comment><USER14> In politics there's seldom evidence available to average Joes.

They release/open some files after decades (not even everything) and you find out that they were lying through their teeth.

If people are to make any difference now, not in several decades, they should doubt most things said officially said, especially for matters concerning trading competitors, or the "enemy du jour" \-- evidence or not, they should take things with a grain of salt.

(I'm also from a much smaller country. In countries where politics directly affect you, history is lived and wars are fought directly -- not 10.000 miles away --, and everybody knows everybody, being cynical of official announcements -- of yours and other governments --, and recognizing duplicity and private interests at play, is a survival skill.

In larger countries like the USA, you can live your life oblivious of politics and major historical events, except on a much larger and slower scale. Heck, your country can even be at war decade after decade, and it will only affect a tiny minority of poor folk that go a draft, 99% of the people will live business as usual.

But I digress -- and of course that's not proof that I'm right on this, just my 0.02 in why some can better recognize that "political and private interest conspiracies" are everyday realities, and not the stuff of conspiracy nuts who believe in illuminati. Try telling that to Italians, for example, who have suffered politicians in bed with the Mafia for half a century, had whole establishment programs to meddle with elections (and prevent parties with 20%+ of the popular vote to ever reach power), and even "enjoyed" government backed extremist organizations killing their own citizens -- and all those verified by courts, albeit much much later).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Math Interactive – An intuitive math reference - <AUTHOR> https://appellante.com/mathinteractive/ <comment><USER2> Hi Show HN

We're three students who have spent the last couple of years developing this interactive math app for high school level. The app lets you explore interactive illustrations and learn how to solve both simple and difficult math problems through elegant solutions. Next to our studies we have spent hours writing the more than 200 articles with detailed descriptions, examples of solved problems and thorough proofs. Try it for free on the App Store.

A lot of work has been put into this, so we're absolutely thrilled to hear your feedback and ideas!</comment>


Why does Rust not optimize code assuming that mutable references cannot alias? - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57259126/why-does-the-rust-compiler-not-optimize-code-assuming-that-two-mutable-reference <comment><USER2> These are not even the only fun bugs and issues that lurk in how various alias/invariant/etc related things are designed in llvm, and trying to figure out the regions they cover.

For anyone ever designing a compiler, do yourself a huge favor: do not try to scope aliasing/etc info using metadata. Make it an explicit part of the ir somehow so that the control and dataflow is explicit to the compiler. (GCC went thru the same fun before LLVM did).

It seems like a good idea at first, but it is almost impossible to keep it conservatively correct during transforms (unless you drop it when anything at all changes, which also turns out badly)</comment>


Ask HN: How to Filter Out Recruiters? - <AUTHOR> How do you filter out recruiters worth your time? I've been reached by a countless number of them, most of them ended up taking my resume and ghosting me for months or just basically wasting my time.<p>Is working with recruiters actually makes sense? (Asked from software engineer's perspective) <comment><USER2> >> Is working with recruiters actually makes sense?

Short answer: not really. Job-hunt and apply directly.

Longer answer: Most of them seem to be in the business of collecting CVs (data for sale I presume).

A few really mean work and are the ones that might be worth dealing with. I don't have a good way to tell which is which though until after ghosting.

It tends to be consistent with companies though. E.g. I got that behavior and time waste consistently from Wikimedia, Oracle, Etsy and a few startups. It's also consistent for me (I'm based in Europe) with recruiters that are based in US. I no longer respond to queries related to above companies or recruiters not based in EU but I still get the occasional time waster.

Recruiting seems to be a very unprofessional and inefficient market.</comment>


Masters of the Small Canvas: Drawing Icons and Emoticons for All Screen Sizes - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-17/drawing-icons-and-emoticons-for-screens-of-all-sizes <comment><USER2> With higher resolution displays I think this gets easier, especially with svg... for a long time it was much more difficult. The skills it takes to make something look better with really low input (ascii/ansi) limitations is very different than even this article presents.

It's good to have modern hardware and browsers...</comment>