My Worst Phone Screen - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hirelite.com/my-worst-interview

<comment><USER2> For the record I just want to point out that this post is yet-another trojan horse style advert for Hirelite.

They seem to be publishing a load of these: a few linkbaity lines of otherwise meaningless anecdote, followed by a pitch about their business.

Did no one notice that the post isn't attributed to anyone - that makes the _my_ part of "my worst phone screen" kind of bunk. They also carefully link terms like "rock star" to other similarly linkbaity posts which makes me conclude it's all just carefully crafted BS content.

Hirelite are not doing anything wrong as they are free to do what they like on their blog. But I'm surprised that the HN community is adding and voting on these with less discern than I would have otherwise expected.

Edit: turns out HN community isn't adding these, just voting on them, see child comment below...

<comment><AUTHOR> I try to make sure Posterous attributes them to me (see the end of this post for an example).

If people don't find them interesting, I can stop posting them. I had been under the impression that self-posts were fine. Most of the time, we're trying to be an advocate for job seekers (currently just developers) in a market that is very company friendly.

<comment><USER2> Nathan, you're clearly very clever at intentionally writing copy that will pique the interest of hacker news crowd, which presumably is your target audience.

I think where you fall down is that submitting all the articles yourself. It removes a lot of the authenticity from the notion that someone independent to your company thought your post had merit to be on HN. That is also why usually it's frowned upon to submit your own blog posts to HN.

Also the anecdote to pitch ratio of your phone screen post makes it feel to me that the only reason you crafted the content was to be able to make the pitch in the first place.

It all feels like this the discovery of your service is being being done by force not osmosis.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback Ben. I post the articles on HN when I publish them. Maybe next time, I won't publish them to HN and see if the readers do it on their own.

I was under the impression that self-posts were not frowned upon. I've found some of the best content here to be self-posts.

<comment><USER2> _I was under the impression that self-posts were not frowned upon. I've found some of the best content here to be self-posts._

There's nothing wrong with the odd self-post, especially if it is a Show HN/Tell HN or whatever. But almost all of your recent activity of your account is promoting either your company, your event at SxSW or your personal blog.

How many self-promoting posts do you need to make before it becomes reasonable to ask whether you are fairly contributing to the HN community? Perhaps you could use your ability to identify successful content to curate and promote the work of others too by submitting more content created by others?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I literally thought this was going to be a post about phone screen quality or a comparison of smartphone screens.

<comment><USER4> Ha! Me too, in fact I've clicked it 3 different times today because each time I wondered why I haven't read about different phone screens yet - then slap my forehead. Apparently I really want to know about the quality of various phone screens.

<comment><USER5> Odd, my browser makes links I've clicked a different color (gray versus black). Are you using lynx, or just a combination of different browsers?

<comment><USER6> Home-Mobile-Work I guess? That would explain seeing the link unclicked three times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not just clueless recruiters who ask these kinds of questions. I've had technical folks (including YC founders when I've interviewed at their companies!) ask me if I'm a rockstar developer, to rate my skills from 1-10, etc.

Other horrible interview questions:

1\. Describe your strengths/weaknesses/creativity. (Dunning-Kruger pops up again. The first time this happened to me, every time I was about to mention something I was probably good at, I kept on remembering someone else who was way better, so I ended up saying "umm..." for about a whole minute. It's emphatically _not_ false modesty, it's just that for many things, there aren't objective ways for me to know if I'm good at it. Also, if I knew what my weaknesses were, I'd try to improve them so they're no longer weaknesses! All these questions do is evaluate your ability to bullshit.)

2\. Name as many data structures as you can. You have 1 minute. (This happened to me at Palantir.)

3\. What does X.Y.Z. (some acronym) stand for? (Without asking me anything else about X.Y.Z.) Interviewer then proceeds to ask me 5-10 more acronyms.

4\. Do you prefer working in teams, or do you prefer working by yourself? (Sounds like a false dichotomy and a stupid generalization. Sometimes, the person asking won't accept my answer when I say there are aspects of both I like.)

5\. Questions where the interviewer has no idea what they're talking about. For example, when I interviewed at Google, I got asked to describe how the normal distribution converges and how I would use this to build a text classifier. (The Googler who asked me this admitted he didn't even know what a normal distribution was, the question was just something he heard somewhere, when I said I didn't understand the question.)

6\. Asking me if I use Python, and when I say no, asking me to estimate the runtime of a Python program to calculate the first billion numbers in the Fibonacci sequence anyways. (Also at Google, by a different person.)

</comment><comment><USER8> Even thought the phone screen was amusing, I couldn't help but think to myself: Did it really happened? And... when?

While reading it, I felt like it was a cute/short marketing story. So, I wasn't surprised at all to read the last paragraph (Working for hirelite, a better interview process blahblah)

<comment><USER9> I can believe it. Recruiters are clueless. One of my favorite recruiter conversations (note: recruiter was British):

R: I noticed you are located in Jersey City, but this job is in New York. If you get this job, how long would it take you to relocate?

Me: I'm confused.

R: My client wants people onsite. No remote workers.

Me: I live 15-25 minutes away from lower Manhattan [where the client is located]. I take the PATH train there every day.

R: I see, but my client wants people located in NY. They are quite clear on this. You aren't even in the same state.

Me (having no intention of moving): I'll need to give my landlord 30 days notice.

Just humor recruiters. It's not their fault they have no clue. If they ask you to rate yourself on a scale of 9-10, say "11". If they have no idea of American geography, tell them you will relocate.

<comment> brown9-2 If the recruiter has no clue of geography, or heck is in a completely different country - what are the chances the position they are recruiting for is any good?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 _Recruiter: Do you have J2SE?_

Seriously at this point, just walk away. Nothing good can come after a question like this.

(Not because of the technology, solely the wording of the question)

<comment><USER10> Anytime a recruiter mentions the word 'Rock Star', 'Ninja' etc.

Run or hang up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Short interesting post that brings up a good lesson, not for job seekers, but for recruiters. The Dunning-Kruger effect, for those unaware of it, states (paraphrased) that the more competent you are, the less confident you are in your competency. Inversely, the less competent you are, the more confident you become in your ignorance.

Recruiters almost always want to hear someone tell them "I'm the best of the best" in an interview, but generally the only people who think that are middle of the road at best. Recruiters should know this sort of thing and look for the guys that say 6-7 instead of the guy claiming to be the Michael Jordan of computer programming.

<comment><USER12> This is true relative to their own ability. A highly competent person may consider themselves to be more skilled relative to average than an incompetent does, but the highly competent person will most likely still be under- estimating his ability and the incompetent over-estimating their ability.

This is critical, because it means thinking you suck doesn't imply that really you are good. A 95% percentile person might think they are in the 60th percentile, and so might a 5% person. Both have the same opinion of themselves.

Another critical point is Dunning-Kruger hypothesized that for highly skilled individuals this effect was due to their lack of awareness about how relatively unskilled others were. When they were given a chance to look at other work they were able to more accurately assess their knowledge.

One possible control is instead of asking individuals how good they are would be to show individuals existing code and ask them how good _it_ is. Dunning- Kruger would suggest that incompetent people would be too ignorant to accurately assess it, and most likely over-estimate its skill, whereas skilled people _are_ able to accurately assess fault in others' work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The point of dunning-kruger effect is not that there's no correlation- it's just not linear. Studies show there is a tier of most competent people who tend to rate themselves lower than the secondmost tier of competence, who rate themselves higher due to a combination of signaling effects and dunning-kruger ("too dumb to know how dumb you are," or more accurately, "not quite smart enough to know that there is a lot you don't know").

</comment><comment><USER14> I am reminded about an incident that occurred during my time in college. A teacher had "determined" that a lot of the class was cheating(1) and decided to grade based on program performance. This led to a lot of sizing up of our fellow students. One worried my friend John and me greatly as he talked and acted as if he were God's gift to programming and was practically giddy with excitement at the prospect of kicking his fellow student's butts.

I am sure he would have said "10" to this recruiter without a second thought.

He handed in his assignment at the same time John and I did. He could not help but tell us about his algorithm to do the graphics faster than anybody else. His explanation led us to believe (and be proven right later) that he had a poor understanding of performance and believe that shorter line count always had better performance(2).

(1) the people he thought were cheating, weren't (2) yes, load time was important, but it wouldn't tip the scale - plus writing to the same byte of memory multiple times doesn't beat an array lookup and one write

</comment><comment><USER15> A conversation with a recruiter isn't an "interview".

<comment><AUTHOR> I just updated the title from "My Worst Interview" to "My Worst Phone Screen" to be more clear.

<comment><USER16> Not really a phone screen, either. The phone screen happens after the recruiter gives your information to someone you'll actually be working with.

<comment><USER17> If there are answers to questions that result in your information not being passed on to someone who you'll actually be working with then it's a phone screen.

<comment><USER15> If after the transaction you could still go directly to the company and interview with them, it's not a phone screen.

<comment><USER17> Well first he said HR, then he said recruiter so I assumed a recruiter working in the HR department directly for that company not as a 3rd party which could be bypassed after the fact without an inside contact.

<comment><USER15> If you say "recruiter" to me, I think "huckster third-party middleman trying to insert themselves between HR and candidates". My definition is, I think, pretty close to the prevailing one.

<comment><USER18> At the last BigCo I worked at, we would call our HR reps who did phone screens recruiters. We had no outside recruiters.

Otherwise, this "someone is wrong on the Internet" stuff that just takes up space on comment threads on HN has gotten way out of hand.

<comment><USER15> I reread the article. You're probably right (he talks about getting "called back for an in-person interview).

I swear to god I'm not commenting out of someone-is-wrong-on-the-Internet-ism. There are developers out there that really believe that what recruiters think about them matters, and recruiters really do prey on that.

As an employer, I also have an irrational distaste for recruiters. They are the worst cold-call inside salespeople ever; it is _impossible_ to get them off the phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you know in advance that's the game you're playing...

 _Do you have J2SE?_

Yes. J2SE, J3SE, whatever it takes.

 _How good are you at programming on a scale from 1 to 10?_

11.

 _You're hired!_

</comment><comment><USER20> That's what a Monty Python sketch of a phone screen would be like.

</comment><comment><USER4> I haven't interviewed for a LONG time, and I'm not sure what recruiting is because I'm quite disconnected with big business practices, but I do believe Interviewing is just Selling yourself), so on a completely arbitrary and imaginary scale, why wouldn't he just say "I'm a 10"? (I know the developer was thinking of a particular scale - but was the interviewer?)

<comment><USER21> You don't do that because you aren't sure what scale the asker has in mind when they ask you to rate yourself on a 1-10 scale. If Paul Graham asks me that ?, his view of a 10 is going to be significantly different from some recruiter whose last job was managing a Dairy Queen.

I've handled this by giving my own rating as well as who I think a 10 would be. For instance, I'd say that I'm a 5 but my 10 is someone like Bill Joy or Linus Torvalds - truly world class developers.

<comment><USER22> Agreed - answer by first calibrating the scale. Or run screaming, if you can afford to blow off the interview.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A dozen years ago a few of us interviewed this guy, thought he was a good fit. When we went to check in with our boss to see if we could hire him, she turned him down. Why? "He seemed kind of geeky."

</comment><comment><USER24> Oh, _that_ kind of phone screen. For a moment there I thought we might have some interesting discussion about Gorilla Glass.

</comment><comment><USER25> If this is the way most recruiters work (by just following buzzwords), why do companies have recruiters? Just curious.

</comment><comment><USER26> That programmer level matrix linked in the article is even dumber than the interview

</comment><comment><USER27> The sad thing is that the team of developers at the company may have been the most brilliant people you've never worked with. At my last company, we had a very difficult time getting even vaguely qualified people in (I'm no elitist, we're talking folks who literally could not code a for loop). When I looked into the methods used by our internal recruiter to advertise jobs, I was appalled. I can't even imagine how awful his phone screens were.</comment>


Show HN: Compconv – Convert React components between function and class - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sungwoncho/compconv <comment><AUTHOR> When refactoring or iterating, I often change React component between functional and classical ones. For instance, sometimes a component extending React.Component turns out to not require any states or methods. In that case, I rewrite it as a pure function, and vice-versa.

However the process is time consuming and tedious. Therefore I have automated it by making this tool. Hope it helps.</comment>


OpenStreetMap UA: "Russian Mappers Attack Ukraine in OSM!" - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/osm_ua/status/1064445318421495808 <comment><AUTHOR> _OpenStreetMap UA_ [0] (Ukrainian OSM users group) give a response (via Twitter[1,2] and Facebook[3]) to _OpenStreetMap Foundation_ on the new _OSM DWG_ (Data Working Group) statement[4] about Crimea peninsula.

2018/11/19[1]:

> _Shame on @openstreetmap! #DWG encouraged the war against Ukraine and > supports the Russia invasion into Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Russian > mappers attack Ukraine in OSM! cc @OSMFoundation @MFA_Ukraine @PavloKlimkin > #КримЦеУкраїна #crimeaisukraine_

2018/11/21[2]:

> _#DWG violates OSMF policy for disputed territories and their own decision > DWG 2018-11-14 Crimea (see part > 4)[https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/64716645](https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/64716645) > @OSMFoundation @Anonymaps @MFA_Ukraine @poroshenko_

[0] [http://openstreetmap.org.ua](http://openstreetmap.org.ua)

[1] [http://twitter.com/osm_ua/status/1064445318421495808](http://twitter.com/osm_ua/status/1064445318421495808)

[2] [https://twitter.com/osm_ua/status/1065198343935221766](https://twitter.com/osm_ua/status/1065198343935221766)

[3] [https://www.facebook.com/openstreetmapua/posts/7744488795580...](https://www.facebook.com/openstreetmapua/posts/774448879558074)

[4] [http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/DWG...](http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/DWG_2018-11-14_Crimea)</comment>


Why serverless computing is one of the biggest threats to containers - <AUTHOR> https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-serverless-computing-is-one-of-the-biggest-threats-to-containers/ <comment><USER2> say what? so instead of using containers directly, use containers via "serverless"

so basically no threat to containers, since basically all serverless providers use containers for it

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the distinction is what the end user sees. Similar to how AWS commoditized hardware, presenting a VM to developers, the argument here imho sounds like serverless hides the containers from the end users, commoditizing that layer as well.</comment></comment>


What are concrete examples of mistakes junior devs often make? - <AUTHOR> There are plenty of resources out there for learning language paradigms, discrete math, and CS theory, so that's firmly on a junior dev's shoulders to take up,practice, and eat, breathe, and sleep.
The rest, it seems, comes down to mentorship/guidance/learning on the job.
But it also seems that some of this guidance can very easily be learned by the junior dev himself/herself (and thereby making mentorship more fun and less "What the hell, dude" for the senior engineer).
Is there a particular class of mistakes that junior devs almost undoubtedly make that they can make sure to be aware of before Day 1 on the job? <comment><USER2> _" SELECT" isn't broken_. (h/t _The Pragmatic Programmer_ , by Hunt and Thomas) Junior programmers will sometimes think the problems they encounter are the fault of bugs in well-tested system software, rather than their own code. (1)

 _The implementers of the legacy code aren 't stupid_. It's very common for junior programmers, tossed into the swamp of some codebase that's been around for years through many different hands, think the code is junk and the original implementers were fools. Usually, it's just that the problem is much more complicated than the juniors understand, and that's how the code got that way.

 _New tools probably won 't solve the problem_. There's a tendency with junior programmers to whine about the antique tools in use, convinced that the new Foobaz framework or Language X will magically clear up the issues they encounter. But the problems with code usually aren't from the tools used to build the code - they're from failure to understand the requirements, and time/scope/resource constraints on development.

 _Perfect isn 't as important as finished_. It's easy to get caught up in perfectionism. It's a good excuse to avoid releasing something you find embarrassing into the world. But the more time you squander polishing that turd, the less time you have for the next tur... er, cool new project.

 _If you can 't write a test for it, you don't understand it well enough_. Writing good tests is hard. It's easy to fall into a trap of "That's too hard to test. I'll just sort of check manually to make sure it works". This _will_ bite you in the ass later!

(1) My first really good bug as a junior programmer actually _was_ a "SELECT is broken" kind of problem (technically, mmap() was broken). I went to a great deal of effort to prove to the senior programmers (and then IBM) that my code was actually correct and I had an OS bug. And if some junior programmer came to me today and said a deep system call like mmap() was broken, I'd laugh at her and tell her to check her code. So sometimes, SELECT actually is broken - just not as often as junior programmers think.

<comment><USER3> > _If you can 't write a test for it, you don't understand it well enough._

While this statement is generally true, I'm amazed how often people rely on substituting good architecture and composability of modules with tests. Like testability was some kind of magic chicken that made software good once somebody waved it over the codebase, while the tests are mostly useful for detecting regressions.

<comment><USER2> The ability to write tests is a fine measure of good architecture and composability. Excessive coupling is one of the top reasons tests can't be easily written.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ok two personal pet peeves. 1: Check your code 100% before you say someone else is at fault. 2: You should assume the engineer before you had a reason for doing the things he did, do NOT assume they are an idiot until you have conclusive evidence that they are.

I say this after having spent a huge amount of time taking over code bases and figuring out that the reason people make engineering decisions sometimes have nothing to do with engineering. Many times the decisions are based upon some business process or "guidance" that led/pushed them down the path. That does not make the engineer or software necessarily bad, it makes the process or guidance faulty.

So many times as a consultant I come in and start researching the code and issues, and then work with the business to understand their issues. Then review the code and find that the code does exactly what they asked it to do (as stupid as it may be), but not what they intended. Do not assume an engineer before you made a mistake until you have proven they have. Assume you haven't seen all the facts initially and dig more. 80 or 90% of consulting is asking the questions to find out why more then how, understanding why tells you the how most of the time.

Just my 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1) When someone comments on your pull request about how you could make your code more efficient - don't get upset - be happy to learn and get better at coding. And get back at your code and refactor it.

2) If someone is mean to you. Like really _mean_ to you, tell them. (Or tell team lead etc...) Some examples are: \- UX guy jumping up on you grabbing your keyboard while in the middle of complicated rebase = not ok! \- other developers not talking to you/ not helping you because they feel superior = not ok! \- random people coming up to your desk demanding you take immediate action because they experienced 'some bug' = not ok! \- people sending you cryptic emails "everything looks fucked up" = ... relax, tell them to send screenshots

3) Take breaks! I actually think this is one of the hardest points and I still cannot get myself up sometimes for breaks - but yeah - fucking take breaks! You don't need to go out with the smokers every 40 mins, but try to break for lunch and mayyybeee socialize (if your co-workers are actually sociable)

4) I can't believe I'm actually posting this but - if you happen to be a straight male and there's a female on the team... ugh... don't stare at her boobs or at her in general - talk to her about code - yes there are female coders out there and fyi they are just like you so don't be too creepy and listen to what they have to say about your code. -__-

<comment><USER6> What does #4 have to do with being a typical junior-dev mistake?

<comment><USER7> Sounds like she was making a general point there. It seems ok to include in a list of junior dev tips, if for no other reason than a friendly reminder.

Also, many junior devs are fresh out of college, where boob-staring is a fond past time and hitting on classmates is a normal thing. But that's not acceptable in the work place.

They might also not be used to talking to women about code if their classes are predominately male. There are a lot of unrealized biases and bad habits that can go away with time and experience, but this is a good reminder for the introverted and extroverted alike: the women on your team are geeks just like you. Geek out with them!

Aside: I had to catch one of my own bad habits writing this post. I initially wrote "girls" instead of "women", which can be marginalizing terminology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When trying to understand a bug, taking up a new framework, or anything with learning: don't read too fast. Read slowly and make sure you understand it. Read the stack trace. If you're 100% sure the documentation is lacking, read the source code, search through the issues, and ping the maintainer. Make a pull request while you're at it. It's okay to spend 1 day debugging by learning the foundations of a framework, rather than 1 day copy-pasting every StackOverflow answer you come across. That approach wastes your time without learning properly in the process.

6-10 years ago we didn't have all these frameworks and libraries. Junior devs are now faced with a mountain of these things that they can easily copy-paste without understanding what's underneath the hood. Make sure they keep the hacker ethos and try to open up those boxes from time to time, so that they'll understand the foundations of certain pieces of software.

<comment><USER7> Seconded!

It's definitely worth the time to point out edge cases, bugs, and documentation issues. 1 hour of your time to file a good issue might save you 10 hours in a month when the project maintainers resolve it, and everyone else in the community benefits from it.

It also gives you a chance to take your mind off the day to day grind, and perhaps do things the right way (like including stack traces and example code usage in the bug report). I find the process of contributing to open source projects very fulfilling, and it really brings out the craftsmanship in my work which is sometimes suppressed in the day-to-day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The biggest thing I see is not considering edge cases.

They'll have a certain way they are checking a few cases (and maybe a couple tests), but they don't have the foresight to really try to break things. They will also make assumptions about how the code will be called, what entities will exist at that point, etc. that just don't hold in reality.

This typically manifests in code that works fine when they use it, and all the tests pass, but it breaks as soon as it gets up on the staging server, or as soon as somebody else tries to use it.

Also: Not listening to feedback from senior devs. Drastically underestimating the complexity of what they are working on.

</comment><comment><USER10> \- Over-engineer architecture (or the tech stack), including not-invented- here-syndrome.

\- Underestimate dev time needed, especially the "second 90%".

\- Early optimization, from unnecessary loops to unnecessary tech stack selection.

</comment><comment><USER11> \- _Why this project took 2 years if I can rewrite this in 2 weeks_

\- _Code is messy, I should rewrite everything using pattern X, framework Y_

\- _Who makes such awful design, it barely works_

</comment><comment><USER12> This question has been asked sooooooooooo many times that some are worn out answering it.

Look at Quora. You will find a couple hundred answers.

Hope that helps.</comment>


Palantir Weighs Giant Public Offering - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/secretive-data-company-palantir-weighs-giant-public-offering-1539864003 <comment><USER2> Secretive maybe, but Palantir is pretty well known as the maker of TSLint, the equivalent of ESLint for TypeScript. They have been accused of some shady things on their issue tracker by jamiebuilds (James Kyle).

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is Palantir considered a data company? Do they sell data? Or provide access?

My understanding is that they are a software company. Software that links together data and makes privacy concerns more relevant.

But if Palantir is a data company, then so is Oracle, SAS, etc.

<comment><USER4> At least when I worked there, Palantir would have been best described as a data visualization and integration company. The TL;DR: of what they do if they take in data from multiple crufty government [1] databases and put them in a format that makes it easier to analyze and and make correlations between things that would have otherwise been strewn about disparate government records. They also build a desktop client to view this data. That's what Palantir Gotham is. I don't really know what Palantir Metropolis is, apparently it's supposed to more about visualizing quantitative data.

[1] I think they also offer these services to private companies now.

<comment><USER3> That's my experience as well. But then is continuum.io a data company as well?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://archive.is/0bfcj](http://archive.is/0bfcj)

</comment><comment><USER6> DONT DO IT ALEXXXXX

</comment><comment><USER7> Peter thiel, libertarian who also runs a govt surveillance outfit? What a POS

<comment><USER6> How is that in any way contradictory bro. Thiel is a boss</comment></comment>


The Simpsons in CSS - <AUTHOR> https://pattle.github.io/simpsons-in-css/ <comment><USER3> I was wondering why I suddenly had an influx of Twitter followers this morning...

Thanks to whoever shared this.

<comment><USER4> Nicely done. I was following the link to "How I did it" and noticed that I got SSL cert errors for the site:

[https://www.chrispattle.com/blog/simpsons-in- css/](https://www.chrispattle.com/blog/simpsons-in-css/)

You're using the cert for octopushr.app... Unfortunately port 80 is also closed, so even the most recent wayback machine wasn't working. Here's a link from 2016 which goes into your methods, which honestly, are a bit on the sparse side (it doesn't detract at all from what you've done):

[https://web.archive.org/web/20160111044359/https://www.chris...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160111044359/https://www.chrispattle.com/blog/simpsons- in-css/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the heads up, I've just removed those links for now. Wasn't expecting anyone to come across them!

<comment><USER5> Still, I remain interested to know how you did it :)

<comment><USER3> I just built the characters up using simple shapes that you can draw in CSS (e.g squares, circles) and layer them on top of each other.

I guess an illustrator would do a similar thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think a hidden gem here is at the end, when it says 'what's cool is, I can now do stuff like.. green Bart, colorless Bart'

That's something I've often thought is a real ace in the sleeve of CSS and also SVG, that ability to basically have artistic parameters as code and change them, animate them, etc.

Obviously you can do that offline so to speak in image applications, but the iteration time is hugely longer, stuff like caching becomes a problem, and you definitely can't automate it based on runtime inputs etc. It's almost like having that image application running in the browser, rendering whatever changes you need in real time.

<comment><USER7> Has anyone done Vaporwave Bart yet? ;)

<comment><USER8> His name is Dankmus.

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

<comment><USER9> I'm compelled to link the Bed Goes Up song! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4HuUmwWesA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4HuUmwWesA)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love how even something as silly and unimportant as this has 13 open issue reports on GitHub.

<comment><USER11> If you check the pull requests tab there's also a showcase of why some people resist putting stuff on GitHub. Most of the pull requests are low-effort tickets like "update bart.css" with no further explanation and a bunch of random changes in the diff.

<comment><USER12> Those almost certainly come from people using GitHub's web editor - <USER2> default commit message is 'Update {filename}'. I despise it, I don't know why they encourage such useless commit messages, there should be no default message because there can be no useful default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> CSS art always reminds me to the acid tests, back in the old days. We come from far! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2)

<comment><USER14> Those tests were definitely fun, and gave me lots of "my browser is better than yours" bragging rights.

I'm surprised that it's the year 2020 and Firefox still doesn't score 100% in the Acid3 test.

<comment><USER15> Shit, Firefox Developer 74.0b8 is even failing Acid2 for me

<comment><USER16> Firefox 73.0.1 on Linux seems to render it fine

<comment> 52-6F-62 73.0.1 on mac reporting—it's almost perfect but the eyes are flawed. There's some ghosting [https://i.imgur.com/r9kycp8.png](https://i.imgur.com/r9kycp8.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cool pictures! Well done! That's quite a feat indeed!

Not being a fan of CSS, I think this (the CSS source code) shows fairly well why I'm not a fan of CSS.

Sure, doing things like this is not what CSS is meant for.

CSS is meant for making HTML do things it wasn't meant for.

</comment><comment><USER18> Some of these do not seem to render correctly on Firefox. Seems to rely on Chrome-specific behavior.

<comment><USER19> Same here: [https://i.imgur.com/M07sFus.png](https://i.imgur.com/M07sFus.png). FF72 (just realised I'm a bit out of date).

<comment><USER20> FF73 on OSX, I see the same result as that image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Viewing this page with Dark Reader enabled makes for quite a harrowing experience...

[https://i.imgur.com/AUTXPfW.png](https://i.imgur.com/AUTXPfW.png)

<comment><USER22> :-(

Everyone forgets that white is not the default background colour. There is no default background colour!

<comment><USER23> Some forget. This page explicitly sets the background white. If the user runs a browser extension that overrides this setting, what can the page do?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very cool but can you fill in the eye whites instead of leaving them as background color? The characters looked really odd with a dark mode extension enabled so all the eyes were completely black :D

</comment><comment><USER25> My first reaction when I saw the title was "oh, not this again", but this looks neat and the CSS source, surprisingly clean!

I really enjoyed the first attempts at 3d in CSS (in pre-canvas, WebGL times). Can't find the right example, but in a nutshell, the approach involved using border-width to create triangles, and thus triangle meshes.

You might like this one: [https://keithclark.co.uk/labs/css- fps/desktop/](https://keithclark.co.uk/labs/css-fps/desktop/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Animated even and the code looks hand-drawn. I <3 it.

Fun fact: I worked at a nuclear engineering consultancy in the 90's. That's the not the fun fact. The hostnames of the computers were all Simpsons' character names.

       rsh blinky

       ftp homer

<comment><USER27> I work at a place now that uses USS Starship names for projects.

Really brings home the old adage about the hardest parts of computer science being naming things when the decision comes down to a discussion of the philosophical implications of a TV episode from 1994.

<comment><USER28> A long time ago I was a sysadmin for a company that gave us a Windows client desktop, and a desktop running Windows Server. The rule was that you had to name the server after a brewery. I'm not a beer drinker, so I named mine A&W. Spelled as "Ayeanddubya." (Aye and dubya) That was fun for a while, people would call it names like "Abbadabba." I later switched it to Duff.

During that time our manager, who wasn't that bright, rushed over and exclaimed. "There is a rouge server on the network!"

We did some looking around and discovered that she had seen my coworker's server, named after Rouge Brewery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Previously posted 6 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7937070](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7937070)

</comment><comment><USER30> This is cool - CSS art is one of the first things I tried when learning to program. I wonder if we will ever see a CSS art exhibition at a gallery or something.

Krusty looks pretty terrifying though.

<comment><USER31> Comic book guy, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> 583 lines of CSS just to create Homer!!

Wow, with this, you don't need a resume, and can probably quote _any_ price you want.

Very impressive!!

</comment><comment><USER33> these are still no match for [https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss- francine](https://github.com/cyanharlow/purecss-francine)

</comment><comment><USER34> Damn, this is dope! (Learnt that from my sons)

Now just give me a design surface tool that takes my raster drawn images and converts it to these CSS and I will be on it like a rash.

<comment><USER17> Why would you do that when SVG exists? You could hand-write SVG more readable and taking up less space.

<comment><USER34> No, you're right. I wouldn't choose CSS based "vector" graphics over SVG at all. But as a playing tool, I would definitely give a CSS based _drawing tool_ a test-drive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> SVG would be a better fit. Hand written SVG is underrated. But maybe it would not be difficult enough to make them in SVG. Whenever you feel the CSS get a bit hacky, like backgrounds with round shapes, it can usually be solved in a few lines of SVG. SVG also has classes and CSS, yes you can have CSS in SVG for style reusability and abstraction. You can also create SVG on the fly using JavaScript.

<comment><USER36> I suspect you may be missing the point of this exercise

<comment><USER25> If everything I did had a practical purpose, I'd die from boredom without learning anything beforehand. Kudos to the poster for sharing this.

Also, if I was hiring a developer with decent CSS knowledge, and found this attached to their CV, it'll help me skip a ton of questions (and I'll be less bored during the interview).

Next step: ensure that the related Simpons characters' images are build using CSS cascade:)

Sidenote: I think we should put more energy in replying to the OP, rather than feeding trolls (I'm up for constructive criticism, but genuinely think that the parent comment doesn't add anything to the discussion).

<comment><USER37> >but genuinely think that the parent comment doesn't add anything to the discussion

I am so tired of having to use flawed tools to achieve a certain goal. Why can't there be a non flawed tool? Often it doesn't exist and then people start cursing. This HN submission is not like that. Proper tools like SVG exist and they make this work like this painless. This is an example of someone going out of his way to feel pain. I don't like pain and I don't want to encourage others to inflict "self harm" upon themselves just because it's cool.

<comment><USER25> Better tools exist. Someone was just trying to have fun, ffs.

Your approach to work/learning might not necessarily reflect the others'.

Picking a technical detail (bear in mind, almost everyone here knows about SVG, WebGL etc...) seems a bit ironic to me, as you mention "pain" and "self harm", whereas the reply by itself seems to lack empathy. Or, an understanding of context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Needs (2015) tag.

</comment><comment><USER39> Nice work! Can you describe the process?

</comment><comment><USER40> That is neat. It only goes to show that it is often not just about tools, but about the artist behind them.

</comment><comment><USER41> Mods: consider adding (2014) to title?

</comment><comment><USER42> Seriously, how are these things made? Is there a GIF2CSS converter or anything like that?

<comment><USER43> When I was a mid level front ender I would manually craft a lot of these for fun, really helps improve your css knowledge

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Spot-on! They even do the creepy blinking animation like the Simpsons arcade game!

</comment><comment><USER45> This is really cool. Everyone looks a bit... wispy? though

</comment><comment><USER46> This is crazy good, didn't know css has come this far.

<comment><USER38> This page is over five years old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Love the blinking!

</comment><comment><USER48> digging a cave with a spoon. if hand-made, hat off to patience

</comment><comment><USER49> No date in title?

This is a classic.

</comment><comment><USER50> Very nicely done!

</comment><comment><USER51> That's crazy!

</comment><comment><USER52> If you like css art... [https://a.singlediv.com](https://a.singlediv.com)

<comment><USER26> Holy mackerel's ghost.

That's mighty _damn_ impressive.

More skills I will never have, like penmanship and singing. Give me about a week, and I'll have a red square and a blue circle aligned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Fun question: Is CSS Turing complete yet?</comment>


Ask HN: How to deal with compensation disparity among peers - <AUTHOR>

There is disparity in compensation in among peers, this happens both at an organization level(colleagues) and also at a personal level(friends).
If I look at myself as the median, I feel happy that I have reached somewhere when I look at the people below me, I feel sad that I have reached nowhere when I look at the people above me. My moods often oscillate between these two states and this is affecting my work and peace of mind.
How does one deal with this? <comment><USER2> I don't know if it's related to American culture as such.

Comparing to others is a good algorithm for a group environment when resources are scarce (if you don't do it, you get screwed and die).

Problem is we're no longer living in an environment where resources are scarce, but our brains haven't been rewired.

Our instincts still want to solve the "am I getting my fair share" problem, when the logical problem to solve is "how do I spend a minimal amount of boring time on getting enough resources to live comfortably".

You cant un-wire the "am I getting my fair share" algorithm, but whenever it pops up you can use that as a trigger to consider the relevant problem instead. "Could I be working less, get paid more for the same work or get to work on something more fun for the same money?"

Once you start thinking of work as money paid per boring hour, then compensation takes on a different perspective. The solution to the money problem may be to work for a start-up (high variance, high EV, potentially low amount of boring hours, or high amount, depending on the startup:)), a big company that lets you work on interesting problems (less variance, low amount of boring hours), working in banking (high amount of boring hours, high return) or whatever else you think is an optimal solution for you, but at least you realise that it is about how you optimise for the problem that matters, not what someone else comes out with compensation-wise (he may be trading a high amount of boring hours for high compensation, or he may have gotten lucky on a high variance route).

</comment><comment><USER3> This question touches deeply on numerous topics, but I would say the foremost areas of concern are your identity/self-image and what you value in life. It sounds ultra cliched, but if you value success solely by income then you are likely doomed to run the hedonic treadmill and will forever unhappily compare yourself to others. American culture does not really have a framework for other modes of living, which is why so many people fall into the 'income comparison trap.'

You can spend months/years/decades delving into this question, but as a starter I would recommend checking out Eckhart Tolle's book, "The Power of Now." I don't recommend many books on spirituality since most of them are full of pseudo-scientific garbage, but PoN is a good one for the practical mindfulness tips it gives.

I would respectfully not recommend that you move to a lower income community just so you can be the top earner; this is merely putting a band-aid on the problem, and from a practical standpoint your neighbors will likely be less able to help you personally/professionally.

</comment><comment><USER2> Get over the bias of looking at compensation on a relative scale. It doesn't matter what X earns, it matters what you earn. You can't beat the bias but you can at least acknowledge intellectually that it isn't logical and work on not comparing to others as often.

Alternatively move to communities where you are the top earner.

</comment><comment><USER4> Find something else to base your sense of identity/self-esteem on besides your income.</comment>


Sun holds key to volatile weather - <AUTHOR> https://www.world-grain.com/articles/11897-sun-holds-key-to-volatile-weather <comment><USER2> This article uses a sun spot figure which is misleading. The article contain scientific statements without any references. For more sun spot info see [http://www.sidc.be/silso/ssngraphics](http://www.sidc.be/silso/ssngraphics) or just Google 'sun spot count'</comment>


Jay Z promotes 'artist-owned' music streaming brand - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32125293

<comment><USER2> I instantaneously thought of Taylor Swift when the title said "'artist-owned' music streaming" and what do you know: [https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6509517/taylor- swift...](https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6509517/taylor-swift-albums- tidal-streaming-jay-z)</comment>


When a Video-Game World Ends - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/01/when-a-video-game-world-ends/423360/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> A funny counterpoint is when an apocalypse occurs in a video game world _accidentally_. Take, for example, World of Warcraft's Corrupted Blood Incident: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident)

Through an exploit, a viral debuff can escape and infect any player or NPC in the world. Cue entire _cities_ dying with no way to stop it. It was interesting enough that the CDC investigated.

Blizzard ended up repeating this event intentionally as a promo for the second expansion (a zombie apocalypse) and ironically, people _hated_ it because it made the game unplayable!

Another funny accidental apocalypse in early WoW was kiting raid bosses to cities, letting them wreak havoc until a GM despawns them: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl0VWJdE01M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl0VWJdE01M)

<comment><USER3> GM?

<comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamemaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamemaster)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My daughter played an MMO by Disney called Pixie Hollow. In the game, players were given pets that they needed to play with, keep clean and feed to keep healthy.

About a month after the game closed, she woke up from a nightmare. She dreamed of the pets huddled in the ruins after all the fairies (players) had left them behind. It sounded heartbreaking.

</comment><comment><USER6> A few years ago I remembered the name of the MUD I played in college. Found it was still online. Couldn't remember my old pw so I created a new character and 'finger'-ed my old character, the one who almost caused me to flunk a semester, and there she was. Still had the same .plan file. Seemed like the correct level and titles too. "Last logged in: 19 years ago". I did the same for my old friends. The most recent was 17 years ago.

I don't get nostalgic often or easily, but I felt this amazing sadness for a minute. All those people who were so close to me. All gone half a lifetime ago but they're still here in a way. Memorialized as bits on a German university server which very few still visit.

</comment><comment><USER7> Another counterpoint to this is a world that exists despite almost no one playing it: Clanlord[1]. I started playing this game during its beta test when I was 16(I'm 32 now) where there were as many as 200 players on a single server. It predated every MMORPG you've ever heard of, unless you were into online games during their earliest days. I still log on there every now and then to "spend" my ranks (basically leveling up skills), and there are still afk clients consistently logged into the server which sit in the town center to heal folks. The coolest thing is the fact that its creator has posted patch notes[2] every 2 weeks for the last 16 years -- how incredible is that?

What's interesting about this game is how the creator of it solved a lot of very difficult technical challenges where there was no common solution at the time. There was always one computer running one persistent world, so he spent a lot of time working on scaling out the performance of that server to be able to handle a possible load of 200 concurrent connections, where the average game at the time could _maybe_ handle 6-8.

Knowing what I know now about programming, I would _love_ to be able to get under the hood of that game and play around with it.

[1] [https://www.deltatao.com/clanlord/](https://www.deltatao.com/clanlord/)

[2] [https://www.deltatao.com/clanlord/news/new.html](https://www.deltatao.com/clanlord/news/new.html)

<comment><USER8> Graphical MMOs that predate it are Habitat (1986), Neverwinter Nights (1991), Meridian 59 (1995), The Realm (1996), and Ultima Online (1997). In 1999 when Asheron's Call and EverQuest came out, games like this became obsolete.

But there are still a few hundred players of Sierra's The Realm, which first came out in 1996.

There are also many community emulators for Ultima Online.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_\(video_game\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights_(1991_video...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights_\(1991_video_game\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59)

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

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

<comment><USER9> Actually CL existed long before 1999 -- I know that very well. I don't have an exact date; the 'official' release date was 1998, but it was just a rubber stamp thing; it had been functioning in Beta mode for several years before that. The release date was just a question of resetting everyone's characters and starting again on a (must slower) experience path.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem is that these games are done forever.

I think the publisher should make a useful software to create some private servers after they shutdown their services. mostly that games could still "live" even without the publisher. I mean if they didn't some things will be gone like forever.

<comment><USER11> The problem with that is IP.

Take a game like Star Wars Galaxies, for instance. Sony didn't own the rights to Star Wars; it was licensing them. When it shut down the game, turning the code over to the public would have been a violation of their license and would have gotten them sued.

Now let's take an example of a game based on original IP. Even then, the publisher presumably wants to maintain its control over that IP. It wants to preserve the option to sell new iterations on that IP at some point in the future.

Even in the case of a publisher's going bankrupt or shutting down, it will attempt to liquidate its assets (IP being a key asset) in order to pay off its creditors. (For example: this is how the Terminator franchise keeps surviving in various iterations, despite the bankruptcy of its original IP holder. The rights were auctioned off at fire sale prices, rather than simply committed to the public domain.)

Intellectual property is the entire basis of the entertainment industry, be it movies or games. It is, accordingly, very fiercely guarded.

[Note: this is not a comment about the ethics or the morals of IP, nor a comment on what game companies _should_ do. It is merely an observation.]

<comment><USER12> I wonder if some kind of trust arrangement in the original IP license could accommodate this.

ie: At the end of this licensure period, $publisher may make technical game material available for use. These materials do not extend a license etc etc. $publisher may not charge for, etc etc.

Most of the time, these old games will have small user bases, and if not, the licensor should be able to exploit that in some way.

<comment><USER11> It's an interesting thought. And I've actually seen games in the wild where something kinda-sorta like this seems to have happened. Not, MMOs. But in some cases old PC or Mac games, now being rereleased, decades later, as nostalgia plays. In cases where there was an IP license involved in the original game, the rereleases are sometimes (but rarely) genericized. Your hypothetical Chewbacca the Wookiee becomes Grordor the Tree Troll, and his Chewbacca sprite is replaced by a bit-riddled rendition of an orangutan with a crossbow. Or what have you.

Of course, every license is slightly to significantly different from the rest. So no telling which games involved more liberal or more restrictive terms within their original agreements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Gotta be honest: This article got me misty-eyed multiple times.

This is what I find cool about Freelancer (and games like it). There are STILL a decent amount of Vanilla and mod servers out there, and that game came out in 2003.

This is one of the big reasons I don't play much multiplayer anymore, other than Minecraft. There's no permanency and no assuredness that what you put together with your friends will be around tomorrow. I know my minecraft server is always going to be running and my friends know it too, we've built amazing things there because of it.

</comment><comment><USER14> And no need to be an MMO to die, solo games can end, too, with their always- online requirements. Diablo 3, Destiny, Sim City, etc. all have solo-only content and will become unplayable once their parent company pulls the plug (without removing the requirement).

</comment><comment><USER15> Played galaxies, loved it. Great crafting system. The becoming Jedi stuff was interesting but won't work in this day of social media and more widespread internet use (barely worked back then).

The overall problem is interesting. You can just shut everything down, preferably in a cool way that feels epic for the players. This is perfectly fine if the game doesn't make money anymore as a player I don't expect games to exist forever. On the other hand you could consider this scenario from the getgo and have a clear transition path once you don't want to support the game anymore. In a perfect world you'd open source everything and/or provide a transition for community run servers. It's an interesting problem how to freeze the data and keep characters the way they were but hard reset is ok as well I'd guess. This rarely happens because well open sourcing stuff is considered a bad idea often but most importantly noone wants to plan for failure (how many startup founders have a plan to wind down the business gracefully). Realistically the technology is pretty old when you fade out a game so...why not? It'll be extra afford but could also turn out to be a great trust-boost for future games. Think ID software :)

</comment><comment><USER16> Relevant 99pi episode [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/game- over/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/game-over/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Final Fantasy XIV deserves a mention here too. Though it came back some months later, the original version was a massive failure, so they ended up remaking the entire game. They planned out a whole apocalyptic event for when the original servers went down, with a meteor visible in the sky and slowly getting closer in the months leading up to the shut down. They story behind it was pretty interesting, and it made the world a lot more believable when they brought it back for the new version.

Much like the article says of Star Wars Galaxies, everyone gathered for the server shut down, and at the end a video played of the impending apocalypse.

</comment><comment><USER18> Toontown at least has been picked up by a team of fans [1] who reverse- engineered the client and built their own server software on top of Disney's open-source release of their networked actor model system, Astron [2]. They're really doing a great job with it, adding new features and content and making significant expansions to the game lore. In some ways they're able to do more with the world than Disney ever would have.

Their marketing has also been very polished - especially for a fan revival of a game targeted at young children - and the community is surprisingly healthy as a result. In run-ups to a major releases, they've run puzzle trails/mini- ARGs that have brought hundreds of people to try and piece together the clues [3].

I hope Disney doesn't swoop in one day and shut it all down, Nintendo-style. They must know about it in some capacity, as core team members from Toontown Rewritten are now major contributors to Astron. Perhaps they think it's better for their public image to let it be.

[1] [https://www.toontownrewritten.com/](https://www.toontownrewritten.com/)

[2] [https://github.com/Astron/Astron](https://github.com/Astron/Astron)

[3] [http://toontownrewritten.wikia.com/wiki/Alternate_Reality_Ga...](http://toontownrewritten.wikia.com/wiki/Alternate_Reality_Game)

</comment><comment><USER19> I would love to see a Twitch stream of the end of the world (of warcraft).

<comment><USER20> I'm sure there will be one, but it'll take quite a while for WoW to die like that

<comment><USER21> The end of the Wow Beta was pretty fun; giant elementals (raid boss size) attacked the major cities, most people weren't beyond level 20 and I'd certainly seen nothing like it before. Of course we couldnt make a dent in them but it was a unique (at the time) experience, well done Blizzard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> reminded me of this episode of 99 percent invisible [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/game- over/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/game-over/)

</comment><comment><USER23> " _This server is going down! Dooooown! It 's dooooomed!_"

[https://web.archive.org/web/20090503173458/http://archive.ga...](https://web.archive.org/web/20090503173458/http://archive.gamespy.com/dailyvictim/index.asp?id=691)

</comment><comment><USER24> The final moments of Metal Gear Online 2: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRuouKk3TiY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRuouKk3TiY)

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm upset that they didn't talk about Glitch - that was an amazing MMORPG with an even more amazing end (and hopeful rebirth)

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder what they will do for Elite: Dangerous</comment>


The new .com for Geeks - <AUTHOR> http://www.grobmeier.de/the-new-com-for-geeks-14022013.html <comment><USER2> The only good thing about not using .com is that the US government doesn't control it (or so I've heard).

<comment><USER3> The downside, of course, is that someone else controls it - .ly comes to mind.

<comment><USER2> .is is good though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Except both of those tlds are a lot more expensive than a .com and as the article notes, do NOT register with the general public. So if you have the money to spend on a vanity domain that you don't need to have "regular" people remember, it is an option.

</comment><comment><USER5> Being a serial ideas man, I'm always coming up with different things and am always purchasing domain names that I don't really use more than once merely for experiments in hopes of them being the next big thing. The cost of registering these new popular domain names is sometimes astronomical compare the cost of an .io, .fm or .tv domain to the cost of a .com or .net. Just come up with an even more unique .com if you want to register a domain.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does the world really need a TLD "for geeks"?

This feels like a money grab to me, and £60 ($93 US) to register a domain is a pretty steep premium.

<comment><USER7> Of course it's a money grab. So are .ly domains, which are over $100 USD. That doesn't stop every other startup from buying them however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> .io does have some good names available, though it's pricey. billy dot io was my little splurge (but is just an alias to my full name dot com)</comment>


Show HN: Alert-after: Utility to get a desktop alert after a command finishes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/frewsxcv/alert-after <comment><USER2> This looks handy, although the size of Rust and Cargo and such required to make it work gave me second thoughts...

Edit: I've just learned of the alert alias in ~/.bashrc that does roughly the same thing.

<comment><USER3> Mind sharing detail about it?

<comment><USER2> Sure. I found this question on Ask Ubuntu [https://askubuntu.com/questions/409611/desktop- notification-...](https://askubuntu.com/questions/409611/desktop-notification- when-long-running-commands-complete) and the second response mentions the alert alias. I'm not sure if this alias is found only in Ubuntu and derivatives (I'm using Linux Mint) or if it's standard among all Linux distributions.

Simply add _; alert_ after your commands to receive the notification.</comment></comment></comment>


"Starting Dec 17, adult content will not be allowed on Tumblr." - <AUTHOR> https://tumblr.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/231885248-Sensitive-content <comment><USER2> Is this the beginning of the end for Tumblr? A very informal survey of friends indicates that they only knew of it for NSFW content so who will still be using it?

I'm curious what percentage of users are only there for that kind of content.

</comment><comment><USER3> The phrase "female-presenting nipples" opens up so much room for interpretation and discussion, doesn't seem like a great choice for trying to make your policy less ambiguous.

<comment><USER4> [removed]

<comment><USER5> Someone that "expresses" or "presents" themself as female is "female- presenting". These people will no longer be allowed to show their nipples.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> there are a lot of jokes being made along the lines of "there goes their userbase" but for me personally this is a huge loss.

especially for those of us who have certain kinks, Tumblr to this day has been the only place to ever exist where women could safely express their sexuality.

it allowed us to meet like-minded people, it allowed us to break the taboo and it ended the isolation that many of us felt.

Tumblrs main asset has always been it's community,and I'm deathly afraid this new policy will take all of this away

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Title extracted from intro sentence since article title is uninformative. (also the intro sentence has a typo)

EDIT: The URL was just put under a login-wall?

</comment><comment><USER7> How much of Tumblr is NSFW material? How many of their users are only there for that? I would have guessed... most?

</comment><comment><USER8> Surprise, surprise.

The shittiest "tech" job has to be reviewing flag content looking for child porn, snuff, etc.

Sounds like tumblr/oath/verizon just decided that it was easier to not have to pick and choose which porn was o.k.

Section 230 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act)) was recently neutered by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Enabling_Sex_Traffickers_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Enabling_Sex_Traffickers_Act)

So once again no really a surprise that tumblr is saying goodbye.

</comment><comment><USER9> May be a duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18590944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18590944)

</comment><comment> phoe-krk Seems like it will force a lot of people onto other platforms. I wonder if it will be the Fediverse and if the Fediverse is ready for it.

</comment><comment><USER10> End of an era

</comment><comment><USER11> How much longer is Tumblr going to circle the drain? Virtually unmonetizeable and declining userbase, and its founder has been gone.

</comment><comment><USER12> edit: Meh, don't feel like having this in my comment history, since I don't really have anything to add anyway.

I'm sad tumblr is doing this, but I understand why they are making the decision to remove it.

<comment><USER13> The main thing is that some Tumblr users consider depictions of childlike characters having sex as OK, whereas that's considered illegal on most of the west. The exact same issue happened to LiveJournal a decade ago, but LiveJournal decided they'd rather keep the new users, creating an exodus of mainstream users as the site became an underage HP fanfic site.

<comment><USER14> Are illustrations depicting underage sex really illegal in most of the West? Possession/distribution/both? That's shocking/scary to me if true.

<comment><USER15> "Are illustrations depicting underage sex really illegal in most of the West?"

If you are talking about the USA, the answer is a definate Maybe. And even if you get convicted, it may get overturned. See [1] because there are conflicting court cases, partially overturned laws. It's a mess.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_drawn_pornogra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_drawn_pornography_depicting_minors#United_States)

<comment><USER14> I was vaguely aware of some grey area in the US, but not of clear cut illegality in "most of the West". Still, even in my vague awareness, I thought this was less muddled in the US than it apparently is.

<comment><USER15> The whole us view on pornography is crazy. For crying out loud, this was said in a Supreme court case by a justice: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Google building a huge floating data center in SF Bay? - <AUTHOR> http://m.cnet.com/news/is-google-building-a-hulking-floating-data-center-in-sf-bay/57608585

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6614066](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6614066)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah! Was surprised I hadn't seen it yet. Thanks for the heads up.</comment></comment>