Technical Recruiting Needs to Focus on Selling the Position - <AUTHOR> https://leerob.io/blog/technical-recruiting-is-broken/ <comment><USER2> Can someone with _any_ insight in the recruiting business help me understand how the bad recruiters think?

Typically you get a vague recruiter spam type message on email/LinkedIn which seems to deliberately avoid saying anything about the position. Based on this they want a _phone call_.

why do they write the messages in a way they must surely understand does _not_ make any employed developer eager to change jobs?

Usually I answer that without more information up front I'm not interested in having a phone call, and I add some questions like "what in particular did you mean when you said I seemed like a good fit for this role?" or "what's the role/seniority more exactly?"

Invariably the answer to that is: "I can't disclose this other than over the phone"

 _what?_

The recruiter now has to be 100% aware that they risk losing this candidate because they couldn't reveal basic information about the position in an email. So why _is_ that?

Are these some kind of low level minion recruiters who work on a commission based on how many phone calls they do, rather than by commission for the actual recruiting? That's the only reason I can think of!

What actually _is_ stopping recruiters from writing

\- you'll work language Z mainly. The team uses tools X and Y.

\- The person they are looking for is a Senior back end developer

\- the work is product based, not contracting

\- the team is 40 people

\- The position is in northern City X with occasional travel

WHY is it never like that? Why is it always some mumbling about "growth opportunities" and how I'm a "good match" and so on?

<comment><USER3> From my experience there could be different reasons:

1\. They want to learn something they are not legally allowed to ask. Most likely your salary (not legal in California), but also citizenship (required for export license jobs but still illegal to ask in the US) , guess your age, gender, race etc.

2\. They think they are very good at persuasion and will manage to sell you their crappy job if only they can get your ear.

3\. As you said, some agencies have metrics they need to meet every month and those include number of calls. I learned this is from reading recruiters rants on Linkedin.

<comment><USER4> It is not illegal to ask about citizenship. It is illegal to discriminate on it where it is not a bona fide qualification, which it is not outside of jobs with legal requirements around it.

It is legally ill-advised to ask about it when it is not legal to discriminate based on it, because you have no lawful use of the information and asking about it is an action from which discrimination can be inferred.

There is a persistent myth that it is unconditionally illegal to ask about things that are usually illegal to discriminate on, but this mistakes both what is illegal and when.

<comment><USER5> Citizenship isn't a protected class so I believe a company is in their right to discriminate if it chooses so. There are legal and timing issues associated with authorization to work.

<comment><USER6> Incorrect. This falls under "immigration status", a protected class under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Please consider reviewing your training material if you are involved in the hiring process.

<comment><USER7> Kinda...

Assuming the person is allowed to work, you're not supposed to discriminate based on how they got that right: native-born, refugee, whatever. However, I can't imagine that you'd be _forced_ to help someone keep or obtain that authorization.

<comment><USER6> "Are you authorized to work in the United States?"

This is good enough. Citizenship is sufficient but not necessary. And of course, you can ask for citizenship if it is a bona fide job qualification (e.g. ITAR).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've started giving formulaic recruiter responses to recruiters that send formulaic inquiries. My response is along the lines of

> Dear PERSON. Thanks for reaching out. I'm happy where I am but for $Y base > salary with SOME_OTHER_BENEFITS I would consider a move. Let me know if that > sounds reasonable for your team otherwise I will be in touch if anything > changes. Feel free to reach out again in 6-12 months either way.

This is a bit cold and focused on the money, but recruiters are usually sending the same emails anyway - as the article points out. Ultimately why waste everyone's time if you wouldn't really consider a move anyway? In the 4 months since I've been doing this, almost every recruiter that has responded has responded with "thanks for responding and thanks for being up front."

To be "honest" with this approach, put a number in $Y that would _really really_ make you consider changing jobs. 1.5x your current salary? Double if you're super happy where you are? Maybe SOME_OTHER_BENEFITS becomes "really high equity percentage" or "fully remote" or "work 3 days a week"?

I put my $Y pretty high so most companies can't afford me, but I've got 1 or 2 companies that may be able to pay it in the pipe. Win-win.

<comment><USER9> I've used this strategy before, but I find recruiters do not respond politely and I end up getting increasing amounts of spam over time; I suspect from recruiters sharing email addresses and especially addresses that are linked with any kind of recent response.

When recruiters do respond to these types of messages, my usual experience is that it's an even more aggressive hard-sell on positions based on some poorly copy / pasted sections of a job description, incoherent lists of buzzwords or technologies that make no sense as skills belonging to one single person (e.g. years of machine learning experience as well as expert in rails), and various all caps or bolded promises that they are paying a lot of money.

This comes from every type of recruiter too, from giant big box headhunting looking for contractors to the latest and greatest stuff like cybercoders to boutiques like phaidon / huxley / other finance crap, on down to lone individual recruiters who have been doing it for 20 years and only got my email because a friend highly recommended them as a legit recruiter.

Truly, in over a decade of working with all types of recruiters, I have never seen a recruiter add value for any party at any time. It's pure loss to engage with recruiters.

<comment><USER10> > Truly, in over a decade of working with all types of recruiters, I have > never seen a recruiter add value for any party at any time. It's pure loss > to engage with recruiters.

Strong disagree.

Good recruiters work for employers by maintaining a strong network of candidates across a number of fields, and also by finding candidates for roles that are cheaper/better than others because they come from recruitment pools outside those traditionally used for the role. Example: a company might be looking for a Sales Engineering role - typically pretty difficult positions to recruit because there's a small pool of candidates. But, if you can find someone in consulting or traditional development/engineering that has the right skills, they can be brought on relatively cheaply. Good recruiters know this, and they know how to find and evaluate those candidates so the company doesn't have to.

By the same token, recruiters that I maintain a relationship with have made my last three job searches significantly quicker and easier - I know them, they know me and they know who is looking for what. They've added significant value for me, and for the employers that I work with.

<comment><USER9> Your comment reads like buzzwordy double-speak. Private recruiters _absolutely_ do not know sophisticated nuances of the skill set for different organizational sales engineering needs. Hardly any of the managers or executives _in that company_ would even know the skills or experience they need for sales engineering, let alone how to recognize them in someone not already working in that position.

It's frankly crazy to hear this, just knowing how incompetent even the most prestige-dripping boutique recruitment firms are, how many totally inappropriate candidates they foist onto firms (I used to run all recruitment for my team at an asset management company and know very well how unhelpful recruiting pipelines are).

The other thing is that these types of recruiting pipelines are exactly the well-worn, used-by-everyone pipelines. You mention various times that this approach somehow draws up unusual or untapped recruits, but it's exactly the opposite. You're just playing musical chairs with the same pipe of recruits that everyone else is looking at.

As a final note, I appreciate how you blow right past the idea that recruiters are supposed to be negotiating in good faith on behalf of the candidate, even going as far as to suggest the recruiter would disingenuously represent a job to someone who shades outside that skill area just for the sake of "getting them cheaply" and not getting them a salary that would more fairly reflect the actual labor value they would be adding.

You've pretty much made a great case for exactly why nobody should be working with these recruiters.

The employer's going to end up with a wrong-skills / wrong-experience candidate who is sold on one job but walks into the real job and quickly sees they didn't want it, while earning below market compensation, and everyone's unhappy in a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This matches my experience too. In my opinion, the way to sell the job is to explicitly mention all the advantages - the company name, the tech stack, why it is a great place to work etc. The most annoying recruiters are the ones that have "a fantastic opportunity" and want to set up a phone call to sell it. I work in Stockholm, Sweden, and I have noticed that recruiters from England often try to talk to you instead of simply listing the position(s).

Extra points for the recruiter if they write something indicating why _I_ would be a good fit - only happens rarely.

Also, checking back later (a year or two) to see if I am open to a change, even if I wasn't before, is OK by me. Sometimes you don't want to change, no matter what the offer is.

We developers should not complain too much about recruiters though - we are extremely lucky to work in a field where there is such high demand. Most people aren't so lucky.

I also think being contacted by a recruiter puts you in a great bargaining position: You are in a much better position to negotiate salary and benefits than if you applied directly. You already have a job, so if the offer isn't interesting enough or good enough, you can just say no.

I wrote a post similar to this a few years ago, making the above points: [https://henrikwarne.com/2015/11/22/recruiting-software- devel...](https://henrikwarne.com/2015/11/22/recruiting-software-developers- initial-contact/)

<comment><USER2> Exactly this. Same experience with vague spammy UK recruiters, also in Stockholm. Not sure what it is in particular about UK recruiters and why they are so hellbent on getting a phone interview without revealing _any_ information. There has to be a reason behind this (such as some weird quota/bonus system for phone calls made) and I'm very curious what the reason is.

<comment><USER12> UK recruiters are frightened of losing their client (the company) to other recruiters. Unless the recruiter has managed to agree an exclusive deal on a particular role, every time they give out the name of that client they risk another recruiter calling the client and saying "I see you are recruiting for X, we have some great candidates, would you like to see them?"

And some UK recruiters play very dirty. They post fake CVs and fake job ads to mine the market. They pose as candidates to get info from other agents; and ask real candidates what other jobs they have applied for.

<comment><USER2> I can see how business practices and contract obligations get in the way. I'm not asking to know the exact address or company name. Or even enough info to know which job it is (such as company age, company size, product type).

All I'm asking is basic things like "what tech are they ussing" or "what type of role is it" etc.

Of all my theories for why they can't say up front I'm now leaning towards this one: they need to gather my info so that if the 5-10 minute phone call is fruitless, they'll have enough candidate info on ME to be able to pay for that call, when they say that info in bulk. If they gave away the big parameters first (location, pay range, tech, ..) they know that's when most conversations will end. I haven't tried, but I'm guessing that if I just tell them enough about me first, they'll eventually allow the call to contain details about the position. At that point I'll just say "no thanks, I can't move to city Y", but they are happy they got some good info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not a recruiter, but I spend a lot of my time building up teams so I figure that makes me a de facto recruiter.

I've personally gone both extremes:

1\. Spamming linkedin, message boards, etc.

2\. Seeking out specific candidates, emailing them, offering to grab coffee or do a call.

I've had more success hiring with #2, in which regard I agree with the article. But it comes with a perverse side-effect: I am ignoring 95% of potential candidates, likely a similar group everyone else is ignoring. I am mostly contacting people with years of experience at good companies with a decent web presence. Because if I didn't, I wouldn't have time to do my other job duties. When I (or our internal technical recruiters) spam out a job we are giving more people a chance at the job, and are introducing fewer personal biases.

I'm not saying either approach is right or wrong, I just think there's room for both. Maybe the ultimate solution is a single centralized marketplace for jobs, but it doesn't seem like there's been a clear winner in this space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight. Some really good points here, especially:

> When I (or our internal technical recruiters) spam out a job we are giving > more people a chance at the job, and are introducing fewer personal biases.

That is something I didn't even consider, but you're absolutely right. You're naturally going to be more attracted to candidates who fit your profile (unless, of course, you're _really_ aware of your unconscious bias).

I think spamming LinkedIn can have success if you properly target and give ample information on who, what, and why. Something I didn't even consider until this was posted on Reddit was the fact that even though I have Java listed in "do not want", it's still going to be picked up as a keyword.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Good recruiters focus on building relationships versus solving an immediate > need.

The problem is they get paid only when immediate needs are met. A placement is hard to do, but results in 25% of an annual salary when done. This results in two kinds of strategy:

1) Spammers. I get this all the time on both sides (as a hiring manager and as a potential hire). The worst is when I get forwarded someone's actual CV out of the blue. It's happened a couple of times recently: a guy who works at Google or Amazon at a high level has his CV sent to me by a recruiter who's never spoken to me. In both cases I found the person on LinkedIn and told them, much to their surprise. Of course there was never a conversation on the other side either. Normally it's not as egregious as this, but it's still not a way to do business.

2) Relationship people. These guys will actually take the time to meet with me and talk about what kind of stuff I do. Both as a hiring manager and a potential hire, there's no sense that they are bucketing me in either, we can potentially do either business. There's no sense of urgency either, just two people discussing the market. I've made business contacts through recruiters this way, nothing expected in return, no hard sell. I've told them we're not even using recruiters, and they still check in for a coffee now and again. I do try to throw something their way, esp when it comes to giving them candidates.

The big problem for the good guys is they somehow have to get paid while maintaining all these low probability relationships. Not only that, they actually need to speak intelligently about every technology and business in the market. They need to know what kind of thing c++ is, how it's different from JS, and what kind of function it might be useful for. This is no easy task.

You can easily see how someone needing to feed themselves could get desperate and go for some version of spamming.

<comment><USER15> For #2. I've had a recruiter that I first spoke to in 2012 after I was laid off. We kept in touch over the years and he didn't get a chance to place me until 2018. I think the $30K he made off of me was worth the few emails he sent over the years.

You only need about 6-10 placements a year to make a decent income.

<comment><USER16> Corporate doesn't let you stop. Even if you hit the 2 placement a month kpi, your other ones don't go away (candidate calls, manager calls, cold resume sends). And I'd you hit all the kpis, they just give you higher ones.

<comment><USER15> This particular recruiter was a partner at a small company where he owned it with another recruiter.

I worked with another guy in both sides, from getting a job and hired people through him. He was definitely under corporate pressure. He would routinely send job descriptions with salaries and they were well targeted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've had recruiters try to set up a call before even telling me the name of the company, big red flag. Last time they did that it was because they wanted to hide that the position was machine learning to make murder robots

<comment><USER18> If someone approached you on LI to build "machine learning to make murder robots", do consider the (99%) possibility you're just a sample point in some social science "research".

<comment><USER17> It wasn't social science research, the recruiter was working for an actual robotics company with almost exclusively military customers

<comment><USER19> Always be suspicious of anything like that. Probably wasn't the case here but nothing prevents one setting up a network of fake profiles to appear legit and get data from others. The Internet is a scary place.

<comment><USER17> That may be true but considering the job was based around where I live and the company has many news articles written about it and lots of publicly verifiable funding, I don't think it was fake. Of course like I said it's not like the recruiter was like "hey wanna make killer robots??" it's more that in doing research for the company and my own job description that's what it seemed likely I would be partially working on

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yes, spamming is bad, and yes, recruiters should read your profile prior to messaging, but for practical reasons the actual outreach message is gonna be largely not personalized other than with your name. Reading an individual developer's Medium posts and then crafting an individualized message based on that is, like, the definition of unscaleable. It's like insisting that cars not be manufactured in factories anymore, but instead be lovingly hand-crafted for each individual owner, one car at a time. This is obviously economically impossible. Also, in practice, the actual response rate for way-personalized messages isn't much higher. It just doesn't make sense in practice.

If there are say 500 Node.js developers with the right amount of experience & CS degrees in a given metro area, the amount of time it would take to research each individual and craft a personalized message based on their Github or Medium posts or Stack Overflow answers or Twitter is literally 10,000x what it takes to just shoot each of then an InMail or e-mail. Again, a recruiter should read each profile to make sure they're on the right track, but the messages are likely going to be mass-produced

<comment><AUTHOR> /u/rm999 had experience with both spamming and personalized messages and had more success with the latter.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19186331](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19186331)

<comment><USER20> Without quantifying anything it's kind of meaningless. The point is that recruiting is a business process and that we should treat like any other type of process, by being systematic.

The information we need is how many interested people responded with a generic message vs. how many responded to the personalized message, and the amount of time spent on each approach. Note that 'responded' here is defined as 'I'd like to pursue this opportunity' or 'I'd like to learn more' which then leads to them pursing the opportunity. Not social niceties like 'I'm not looking but it's wonderful that you took the time to read my Medium posts, you're so different from the other recruiters', etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It often seems that recruiters think they are doing one a favor by offering you this shiny new job.

I am so tired of the mono directional process where you have no idea really, what you are getting into before you have been working somewhere for at least 3 months.

Recruiting is about personality and knowing how people thrive in a certain environment.

They are so low in the food chain, IMO, that I find it really difficult to take any of them serious.

<comment><AUTHOR> > It often seems that recruiters think they are doing one a favor by offering > you this shiny new job.

Exactly. The people they're trying to recruit already have a job. So they're going to need to sell us on the position. _Especially_ if I've never heard of the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is about scale. Technical recruiters sometimes need to be able to reach out to hundreds and maybe thousands of candidates at once, and making "personal connections" does not scale in this case.

Even if they automagically parse the keywords and plug them into a template, sometimes things are missed and mis-placed (Java vs JavaScript, etc...).

<comment><USER2> But sending vague initial messages to hundreds of candidates and saying they are a great match and that they want to discuss over the phone _can't scale_! It must be much better to just give the basic info (level, tech stack, location, salary range, job description ...) so that you don't waste time calling people who will realize 10 minutes into the call that the position is in the wrong city or whatever.

If such a message actually leads to a phone call, then it's bound to be with the most desperte candidates and not with the best match candidates.

If they send out a more detailed message to 1000 people, and get responses from 25, then there should be time to research these candidates further to build a personal connection, including having a phone call.

<comment><USER20> I'd like to see you read the Medium posts of 1000 developers and develop a personalized message for each person based on that, and see how long that takes and how that scales. No defender of the current recruiting system, but I think the expectation of extreme personalization is a bit much. Like my example below of scrapping factories and having Toyota craftsman handmake each individual car for the buyers

<comment><USER2> What I said was they should spam 1000 devlopers and then read up on those that actually respond - exactly because they can't be personal with 1000 people. Personalized would be great and costly. However, being mass produced spam doesn't explain why critical info is left out, such as

\- in what city is the position?

\- what job would I do in this role? Developer? Project owner?

Details like these are deliberately left out, so I'm wondering why that is. Theories I have seen that don't quite fly are:

\- They think they are so good they can convince me if they get my ear in a phone interview (Phone interviews are expensive if 99 of 100 calls end with the person realizing after 5 minutes that the job is for a skill they don't have, or in a city they can't move to).

Theories that are more plausible, still don't seem likely:

\- There is a 419-scam element where the emails are crafted to attract the most desperate candidates, and actually repel any qualified ones which would likely reject the offer anyway. (This seems like bad economics even at scale since no one will do good business recruiting bad candidates, but together with the above theory it might work)

\- The recruiters are incompetent. They actually do waste time in phone interviews with peoplethat could have been filtered away because of e.g. the wrong skills or location. They actually thought that being vague and talking about "great opportunity for personal development" would attract devs more than "Backend Go gig in Boston". This is plausible (explains what is observed) but it seems far fetched that a large fraction of the industry would be this incompetent.

Curiously, even when the first contact is a _phone call_ the details are hidden!

"Hi this is Bob from X recruiting, I want to talk do you about vague vague thing, when is a good time to talk?"

If they _already have my ear_ what makes them reluctant to use the info then? They have to spill these details at _some point_ so why not open with "Hi, I'm Bob from X recruiting. A client of mine is looking to fill a position as a Go Backend dev in Boston. Not sure what your status is right now, would you be willing to discuss this?"

The most plausible theories if you ask me:

\- There is recruiter subcontracting going on, where a top level "good" recruiter uses spam-recruiters for leads, and don't give them more than a minimum information and compensation to get those leads. Possibly even with multiple levels so that the top level firm doesn't even realize what goes on at the bottom.

\- There is no position at all, or there is a position but filling the position isn't what drives the recruiters business since these are low-level recruiters (see above). Instead they want a 5 minute chat where they can ask me questions and build a profile with info they can't find in e.g. LinkedIn. This info they can then aggregate sell to other recruiters for good money, way more for a good money than the cost of a 5-10 minute phone call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Executive recruiting" basically works this way. They talk to you about your history and interests and then follow up with a dossier of possible projects/GMs that they will introduce you to in order to see if there is a fit. The whole process is very personalized.

This is basically the terminal point of engineering recruiting, though.

</comment><comment><USER24> > Good recruiters focus on building relationships versus solving an immediate > need.

This is exactly the focus of the startup we're launching in London this summer. I'd love to chat to people from HN about their experiences with this. Contact details on my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for setting a positive example of how recruiting should be done!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The business of recruiting has changed in the last two decades. In late 90's, recruiters used to know candidates in person, and know what they were doing, etc. Now recruiters work like assembly line workers or offshored workers, who have no clue beyond buzz words. If your profile matches with one of the buzz words, you get spam.

</comment><comment><USER26> The author of the OP lists in his LinkedIn profile things that he wants and does not want in a job, but saying "I am not interested in X" is a little counterproductive if that causes your profile to come up in keyword searches for "X".

For related reasons I no longer mention on my resume that I have Magento experience. :)

</comment><comment><USER27> To be honest, without getting the salary range up front or within the first email exchange, I typically end the interaction there. I've had way too many days and weeks wasted only to find out the company can barely pay 2/3 of my current salary. I don't care how great the perks are or job is, if you can't pay competitively, I'm not wasting my time. The rest is just details including tech stack etc. The right amount of money for the right job could easily make me overlook such unimportant details (pretty much never happens). You want to sell the position? Offer a ton of money and the position sells itself. Don't have that? Offer a competitive salary with remote work. Don't want to do that? Fuck you, no one will shed tears for your bankrupt business.

</comment><comment><USER28> Perhaps what you really mean is that technical recruiting by Big Companies is broken?

<comment><USER29> Not really. I get way more horrible, poorly targeted recruiter spam from crappy SV startups than I do large companies. In fact, the large companies usually actually read my profile.

Edit: It does depend on the "class" of large company though. I get truly shit- tier spam from C-list companies like GE, Boeing, or Panasonic ("Hey, interested in relocating to Missouri for a $18.27 hourly Java contract!?") Tier A companies like FB, Google, etc. always send great recruiting messages that suggest they read my profile and did at least some due diligence matching it to an appropriate position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> In my most recent job search, I was really surprised to find that about half of my initial calls were with engineering managers, not recruiters. They're certainly in a better position to sell the company, but I found that I was uncomfortable asking the basic "how much, what are the benefits, what's the work life balance" type questions that I would generally want to get out of the way before being sold.

</comment><comment><USER31> "genuine, personal connections"

Isn't that kind of a high bar to jump over for this?

<comment><USER32> Isn't the hiring process too? Standard today seems to be

\- 1-2 phone screen interviews

\- 1-2 remote coding exercises/interviews

\- 4-5 45-60min round of interviews, on site

\- Optionally, and extra interview day for culture fit

Is asking the recruiter to actually look at your profile and take an interest too much to ask, given what they're asking you for, and given how the market, at least in SV-like areas, is today?

It's great to work in this industry, don't get me wrong. But if some candidates don't want to even acknowledge automated requests, that's just how the market works.

<comment><USER33> This isn't my experience. I have never done more than two interviews for a position. None of which involved coding or exercises. Perhaps this is the standard for businesses in the valley.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> My name is Mark. I work with C and C++ in computer graphics.

I often receive 'Hey David, I was impressed with your marketing & sales skills'.

Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER35> The real problem is the signal-to-noise ratio in legitimate, well-focused recruiter emails to the typical recruiter spam one receives on a daily basis. I sometimes miss the legitimate emails, and although I am not usually looking, I like to respond with a friendly reply asking to keep in touch.

</comment><comment><USER36> Can we get rid of recruiters altogether?

Yeah, I know that's an absurd idea, and I don't know any way we could really do that. But we are always going to have problems if we continue to insist on having non-technical people serve as the initial point of contact for technical positions.

<comment><USER37> Met with a company at a conference last year. They were there at a booth saying "we're hiring people". Met, talked some, they indicated I wouldn't be a good fit. Got a call from a recruiter last week, and... have already had and passed a first call screen, another tech call set up for this week. I realize a lot can change in a 6 month period, but... it's also slightly frustrating. If I was paranoid, I might say it's ageism at play (I have visibly gray hair and certainly couldn't pass for late 20s anymore). But I suspect there's multiple factors at play here which still make 'going through a recruiter' somehow feel like a safer bet for some companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Oh Please. Anytime someone tries to hard sell a position, I'm usually just impressed by their sales skills but I know that it usually sends a red flag for me.

</comment><comment><USER39> Psst…you might want to blur those names out more (or even put boxes over them), since it's possible to make them out if you squint.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I could see how if you really zoom in you might be able to make out some letters. Just deployed new images that are more blurred.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> At the moment they focus on 10 years experience in a job that didn't exist 2 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is why I deleted my LinkedIn profile.

</comment><comment><USER42> title is a bit click baity. It's not broken just poorly done. I agree with a lot of the thoughts though.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure why the title of the posting was changed. The title of the article is "Technical Recruiting is Broken".

<comment><USER43> Personally, I found the (more specific) current title very helpful in deciding to click through. "Technical Recruiting is Broken" is awfully vague -- not to mention that I'm pretty sure I've seen blog posts with that title before -- and (for what it's worth) I would have continued scrolling right past it.

You have a distinct, concrete facet of recruiting that you're talking about -- which is great! -- and the current HN title accurately reflects that.

<comment><USER44> "Technical Recruiting is Broken" is very click-baity IMO, as the "is broken" bon mot has become rather popular and reveals absolutely nothing about what the article is about.

<comment><AUTHOR> True - perhaps my overly simplistic title was not the best choice. Well, thanks to the mods for rephrasing it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to improve at programming? - <AUTHOR> I feel I have a decent knowledge of programming however I would really like to improve? Does anyone have any recommendations/resources to help me improve?<p>Thanks <comment><USER2> Participate in open source projects of your liking</comment>


Show HN: Wonderling - Questions app for connecting with friends, family, and S.O - <AUTHOR> http://wonderlingapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> Dev here. Wonderling asks you and your friend the same question, and once both have responded, the answers are revealed. Things like "What would you do if you were invisible for a day?" or "Have you ever been caught naked?".

As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, one of the things that really appealed to me about this app was how simple it is. It felt like something I could implement by myself relatively quickly (wife did design, sister did content). Of course it ended up being a ton of work.

Built with react-native + redux, go appengine backend, and SNS.</comment>


Show HN: Instagram and Facebook Photos Delivered Monthly - <AUTHOR> http://strikingly.com/snappic <comment><USER2> I thought that the service was to just give me a monthly email digest of the best photos on Facebook so I don't have to go to the website. That I like in and of itself.

This I like too, I wouldn't personally be a subscriber, but I can see people who are very active on FB/Instagram really liking it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting idea for an email digest actually.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Who are you? You want me to give you money but you won't reveal your names or photos of yourselves?

"Who the hell are you to ask for money like this?" was my immediate reaction. No about page, no contact page. Nothing. So you've never done sales, and this is your first lesson. Being on the internet does not mean you can ask people for money without proving yourself to be legitimate.

And I see this 7/10 times on HN projects. The excuse is always the same: "Oh we forgot we just put the site up". The about page is the FIRST thing that should go up.

<comment><USER4> They have it on their main page, if you bothered to scroll down to the footer, you'd realize that this is not their main service, so it wouldn't make sense for them to have their information on every single page of their site.

[https://www.strikingly.com/?ref=logo&permalink=snappic](https://www.strikingly.com/?ref=logo&permalink=snappic) (footer)

<comment><USER5> What makes you think they run strikingly.com ? From what I can tell strikingly.com is a squarespace type deal, and they're using some cheap plan which plasters a logo on the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> At this point we're testing the concept and seeing whether people are interested in having their most memorable FB/IG etc photos sent to them in physical form.

Btw, Strikingly (not affiliated with us) is a great tool for creating nice looking one-page sites. Recommend checking it out!

<comment><USER5> If you're at all serious I'd suggest investing the $16 to remove the branding of this other company + a couple bucks for a domain. Goes a long way to improve credibility.

<comment><USER4> Seriously, having your own domain goes a long way for credibility. Sorry about my confused reply, ChrisNorstrom, no harm intended. Oh and the "not bothering" bit of my comment was uncalled for, so, sorry for that as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice idea, though I'd probably just end up with a book of what everyone's had for lunch last month.

Can I select a group of "close friends" or "don't do duck face" rather that tagging?

<comment><USER7> >You can also tag photos on the fly with #SnapPic so they make the print for that month.

Did you even read the website?

<comment><USER6> > rather that tagging?

I did, but did you read my comment?

<comment><USER8> I understood the service as only printing photos you've uploaded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interested in learning more about this project but the "I Want In" button doesn't work for me. The button leads me a to "Page Not Found" page.

Here's the link I was directed to: [http://www.strikingly.com/site65053-1375937917#3](http://www.strikingly.com/site65053-1375937917#3)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! Fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://piccolo.is/](http://piccolo.is/) cloned already?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would love to get some feedback on whether you'd use this service, or any ideas around it!

</comment><comment><USER11> Is $7.99/month feasible? I would guess there are slim margins here, servers/bandwidth, colour printing, shipping, etc. I guess most of this can/should be outsourced to existing companies, you could just glue the pieces together.

<comment><USER12> As somebody from the industry; I can only imagine that it's being done in China or something. Even then there'd be super slim margins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kind of seems like a suite of services that could be for old people, extend to include a print out of a twitter feed and email inbox so they never have to use the computer.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting service, not too sure if I would be using it given I am stuck on the feed "infinitely scrolling" about stuff in my universe :).

</comment><comment><USER14> I like the idea, but not a fan of a stranger going through my facebook photos each month to make recommendations.

<comment><USER15> Well, there is already a stranger going over your email to show ads in your client no? ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is this a landing page to see how much interest there is, or is there something in advanced development?

</comment><comment><USER17> Can we register multiple addresses ?

If I had children (!) I'd love to have photos sent to my relatives every month.

<comment><USER18> You really shouldn't give children's privacy away by posting their images and information at companies like Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> check this out [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6126255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6126255), quite similar and very useful, as I commented on previously.

<comment><USER19> Forgot to directly link: [http://instagic.com](http://instagic.com)</comment></comment>


Facebook IDOR 2017: Page Role Team - <AUTHOR> http://thesecuritynews.com/project/facebook-page-role-team <comment><USER2> Curious if thesecuritynews is your website.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes

<comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, _thesecuritynews.com_ might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the info</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Build Your Own Probability Monads - <AUTHOR> http://www.randomhacks.net/probability-monads/ <comment><USER2> Woah, this seems like a lovely abstraction. Seems like the guard does the magic. Does anyone know if there are advancements along these lines?

<comment><USER3> Probabilistic programming is the natural extension of this line of development. It's an active area of research. Two such languages implemented in Scala are Figaro and Factorie. Not sure about Haskell.

(Also, weird reading a comment I made on that blog 8 years ago!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing those libraries out. I am much more familiar with Scala so those were very helpful for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The title is intentionally strange. It is a nod to this great learning Haskell book: [http://learnyouahaskell.com/](http://learnyouahaskell.com/)

I also just finished reading "The Happstack Book: Modern, Type-Safe Web Development in Haskell" which I highly recommend taking a look at: [http://happstack.com/docs/crashcourse/index.html](http://happstack.com/docs/crashcourse/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> That lead quote is highly ironic considering that MSR employs arguably the most talented collection of mathematical probabilists anywhere in the world (including academia).

<comment><USER5> I understood the lead quote to be about comparing the software developers at the two companies, not people in the research arms.

Also, I'm curious: who are the top-notch probabilists at MSR?

<comment><USER6> I think Itai Benjamini is at MSR. [http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~itai/](http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~itai/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Imagine a random number generator that picks 128 bits from a uniform source of 0's and 1's. Then, if I understand this correctly, if this RNG is implemented using PFP, the result will consist of 2^128 different bit-strings, each with the same probability (?)

How is this represented internally? What is the time and space complexity? Is there even a way to practically do this?

<comment><USER8> Probability monad is a really novel way to experiment with stochastic processes. I saw one in scala few weeks back. To get insight into 128-bit strings, you can transform/group the sample space such as finding the P(1st bit is 1) or get a histogram of P(# 1s in string). Otherwise, each bitstring will be almost unique. The code is really concise and execution is less than a second.

        val d: Podel[Vector[Int]] = Bernoulli(p = 0.5).repeat(128).map(_.toVector)
        println(d.probability(bits => bits(0) == 1))
        println(d.map(bits => bits.count(_ == 1)).hist(sampleSize = 10000, optLabel = Some("Number of 1s in 128 bits")))

output:

        /*

0.5054

Number of 1s in 128 bits

42 0.01%

45 0.09%

48 0.43%

51 1.53% #

54 4.49% ####

57 9.84% #########

60 16.21% ################

63 20.46% ####################

66 19.62% ###################

69 14.76% ##############

72 7.86% #######

75 3.49% ###

78 0.89%

81 0.23%

84 0.07%

87 0.01%

90 0.01%

         */

<comment><USER7> I can imagine a simple scheme by which this works: simply keep a "distribution" with every single variable. However, I guess this stops working correctly when there is correlation. For example, imagine that somewhere in the program, I generate a variable X with 50% probability of being 1 and 50% of being 0. Then I generate Y = -X. And finally, I compute Z = X + Y. Now, if the program does not keep track of the fact that Y and X are correlated, then Z will falsely contain nonzero values in its distribution.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps this example is what you describe? flatMap (used by the for comprehension) enables monads to combine in powerful ways. The first part shows uncorrelated X,Y such that Y ~ -X, then the second part shows correlated Y = -X such that every y = -x

        {
          val X: Podel[Int] = Bernoulli(p = 0.5)
          val Y: Podel[Int] = X.map(-1 * _)
          val Z: Podel[Int] = X + Y
          val d: Podel[Int] = for {
            x <- X
            y <- Y
            z <- Z
          } yield {
              z
            }
          d.hist(sampleSize = 10000, optLabel = Some("Uncorrelated X, Y"))
        }

        {
          val X: Bernoulli = Bernoulli(p = 0.5)
          val d: Podel[Int] = for {
            x <- X
            y = - 1 * x
            z = x + y
          } yield {
            z
          }
          d.hist(sampleSize = 10000, optLabel = Some("y = -x"))
        }
        /*

Uncorrelated X, Y

-1 25.52% #########################

0 49.60% #################################################

1 24.88% ########################

y = -x

0 100.00% ####################################################################################################

         */

So far, the weakness I find with probability monad, and simulation, is lack of precision. This makes them useless when the probability you want to find is precise such as 5.324e-11. Only formulas can give you the answer.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to stay focused - <AUTHOR> I read everywhere that "focus is key" and people who do one thing at a time have higher chances of getting successful. It is very hard for me to stay focused on any one thing, I give excuse to people that "I get bored easily", but I think that is not true, because I want to focus, I just can seem to do it. I will start a idea build it to some degree, then jump on another one. As a result not getting any thing done.
I have tried all the most of the "tricks" Don't break the chain, GTD, checking email only once etc by I get distracted easily.
How can I discipline myself to start something and take it to end, without getting distracted mid way. Or how can I stay focused? <comment><USER2> Set small goals and mentally affirm your own awesomeness at their successful completion.

Evaluate the path you are on: distraction is often a manifestation of doubt.

Don't chase whatever idea comes to mind until that mind proves that it can get it's shit together and finish something. Finishing things is no holy grail, but it can teach you the structure and methodology to bring your big ideas to fruition.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this "Distraction is often a manifestation of doubt".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Get a piece of paper.

2\. Write down what you're going to do.

3\. Work.

</comment><comment><USER4> vi /etc/hosts

0.0.0.0 facebook.com 0.0.0.0 reddit.com 0.0.0.0 news.ycombinator.com

wq!

</comment><comment><USER5> Can you minimise the number of things that require your distraction each day? If so, you might still be able to make progress against your main project, although not as quickly as you would like. Try to cycle through your distractions back to your main task several times a day. Aim to increase the time on your main task and reduce the time on the others with each week.

If it is multiple ideas/projects that are keeping you from focusing on one, then maybe you have to accept that the only way to make progress is to work on all in parallel. Be warned this will likely increase project completion time an order of magnitude, and you run the danger that nothing is finished in the end.</comment>


Still no violation of Lorentz symmetry, despite strongest test yet - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2016-12-violation-lorentz-symmetry-strongest.html <comment><USER2> Lorentz invariance appears naturally in practically all theories with waves - its violation would be a huge surprise.

To see it, understand STR, the perfect model is sine-Gordon: just many coupled pendula - we get particles ("kinks") with rest mass, which are created/annihilated in pairs, the mass grows exactly like in STR and is released while annihilation ... while moving these particles undergo Lorentz contraction (speed is limited by speed of massless waves) and oscillating particles ("breathers") slow down (time dilation) - exactly like in STR.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine- Gordon_equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sine-Gordon_equation)

"Universe model with a drill" ;) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl5Qq5kUbEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl5Qq5kUbEE)

Animation of kink-antikink annihilation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_defect#Images](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_defect#Images)

<comment><USER3> There are lots of non-relativistic models using waves. Nothing special about them. The most compelling argument for relativity is causality. You can reconstruct spacetime – up to conformal transformations – just from the causality relations. I can't even imagine what physics would be like w/o causality.

<comment><USER4> GR does not imply causality nor does it enforce it. In fact GR works in a non- causal universe without a problem.

2 very sensitive measurements conducted within the past year seem to suggest (if GR is true), that we are in a universe that lacks causality. 2/3 LIGO detections imply one of the merging pair of black holes _should_ be a naked singularity.

GR allows naked singularities. It models them fine. GR just stops being _globally deterministic_.

If you look up the history of GR some mathematicians in 50's made some _really weird_ proposals for non-causal universes that would _appear_ locally causal. But there isn't a way to test this. So it is more pure mathematics or philosophy then physics.

<comment><USER5> > 2/3 LIGO detections imply one of the merging pair of black holes should be a > naked singularity.

Where did you get this impression? All of the LIGO results are consistent with "standard" GR black holes whose event horizons merge.

<comment><USER6> Possibly referring to this? [http://physics.aps.org/synopsis- for/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116....](http://physics.aps.org/synopsis- for/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.171101)

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

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the links. I find it unfortunate that often in science (and especially with the LIGO data) much is written about what could possibly be lurking in the data but isn't actually favored over our current understanding.

This creates more interest, but can obfuscate what the real situation in the field is. In this case, while Gravastars are certainly something many scientists actively do and should consider, there is no real evidence from the LIGO data that favors the hypothesis of "we are in a universe that lacks causality" over the observation of the merger of two Kerr black holes.

<comment><USER6> I think you're being a bit harsh. Is there any empirical evidence that favors classic black holes over gravastars, or is our "current understanding" just a matter of what we thought of first? If the latter, take a chill pill and let us enjoy the possibilities. :)

<comment><USER7> > Is there any empirical evidence that favors classic black holes over > gravastars

Yes.

[http://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.084...](http://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.084016) (preprint: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.08759](https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.08759))

So you're still left with gravastar models that can co-exist with black holes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Relevant piece of information as to why this is important:

> "Furthermore, so far, it has been impossible to conciliate in one common > theory these two aspects of physics. To succeed in this quest, almost all > unification theories predict a breaking of Lorentz symmetry."

<comment><USER9> Hmm, does this relate to the article from 6 days ago about the inability to find proton decay? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13201065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13201065)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a conservation law associated with Lorentz symmetry, the way there are conservation laws associated with other symmetries in physics (conservation of energy from symmetry under translation in time, conservation of angular momentum from symmetry under rotation, conservation of linear momentum from conservation under translation in space, and so on)?

<comment><USER11> Lorentz symmetry is associated with conservation of center of mass, see [1]

(Note that it's actually talking about Lorentz symmetry _without_ rotations (called "Lorentz boosts"), because rotations are associated with another conservation, as you mentioned.)

[1] [http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/12559/what- conser...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/12559/what-conservation- law-corresponds-to-lorentz-boosts)

<comment><USER7> That's true for the Lagrangian written down in the excellent answer at stackexchange, but the equivalent Lagrangian of the Standard Model Extension (SME) (which is what is the topic of the Bourgoin et al. paper) is filled with additional terms.

For example, a minimal SME photon Lagrangian is developed in section II. A. of Kostelcky and Mewes @ [https://arxiv.org/abs/0905.0031](https://arxiv.org/abs/0905.0031)

The difference between a minimal SME (mSME) and the full SME is that the latter admits terms of any mass dimension greater than two, while mSME requires power-counting renormalizability (in order to be an effective field theory) so mSME admits only terms of dimension four. As a result mSME can only have a finite number of Lorentz invariance violation parameters, while SME can have an infinite number of them.

The bright side is that mSME can represent locally the Lagrangian in the physics.se answer you link to with a fixing of parameters; the dim side is that in general one does not want to do this a priori, precisely because the mSME is a tool to investigate whether the Lorentz SO(3,1; R) group is an exact feature of nature at every point, rather than postulating that it is (as the Standard Model does, and indeed as Special Relativity and General Relativity do).

For example, SME is useful for dealing with things like this: [https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bumblebee_models#/Lagrangian](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bumblebee_models#/Lagrangian) where the non-matter term might not reduce (via GL(4, R)) to the groupoid of local coordinate transforms on the manifold and the local SO(3, 1; R) Lorentz group on the orthonormal frames (tetrad formalism) which are the symmetries of General Relativity. The point is to find out under what conditions any such model does vary from General Relativity. (We already have a good EFT for GR itself, and the result of the Bourgoin et al. paper is that it remains good.)

<comment><USER7> Half-jokingly one could say that what's conserved under the transformations of Lorentz group of the SME is the behaviour of the Standard Model under changes to the physics of gravity. A bit less jokingly, that corresponds fairly well to conserving the microscopic description of the centre of mass-energy- momentum rather than just the centre of mass-energy-momentum (at t=0 for some total energy) as in phys.se answer in the GP comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> preprint: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.00294](https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.00294)</comment>


What is the best price for an iPhone App? - <AUTHOR> http://webdesktoplife.com/post/1039101425/what-is-the-best-price-for-an-iphone-app <comment><USER2> "In a market of 100 Million devices (in june) I only need 0.005% of all iOS device owners to buy my App at $2.99 to make a reasonable amount of $9,867."

I think you need to think more about why even one person would buy your app at any given price. What about looking at similar apps that are grossing well rather than just the broad general market of top grossing apps?</comment>


Show HN: I made Localization Management System that supports branching - <AUTHOR> https://localizely.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Creator here. As a developer, I used few online tools for collaboration on software localization, but I always had troubles when it comes to maintaining localized content for multiple versions of apps. As we all know, we sometimes start developing version 2.0 that won't be released soon, beside already released version 1.2 that requires some maintenance and changes. I wanted to make such Translation Management System that does not block us.

So I build Localizely. You upload your localization file for main language, translate content to remaining languages and then download files for all those languages. When you start developing a new version of your app, you just create a new branch in Localizely. You can compare what keys and translations are changed between branches and optionally merge those.

This is just a start what I want to achieve with Localizely ( [https://localizely.com/](https://localizely.com/) ) that is not on the market. Please let me know if you have any questions. We can focus more on making our apps better if localization does not create a bottleneck.</comment>


What is O(log n)? Learn Big O Logarithmic Time Complexity - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/nielsenjared/big-o-logarithmic-time-complexity-gng <comment><USER2> The big change since you learned about order notation in school is that the things that used to be counted as N are now nearly free, compared to pipeline stalls. So, performance today is (meaningfully) measured against the count of those, instead.</comment>


China sets AI standards – can anyone tell me what they are? - <AUTHOR> Folks, I read : https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610546/china-wants-to-shape-the-global-future-of-artificial-intelligence<p>Can anyone provide the document and a translation? <comment><USER2> Here's an article in Chinese: [https://www.jiqizhixin.com/articles/ai- report-2018](https://www.jiqizhixin.com/articles/ai-report-2018)

Download link of the white paper: [https://pan.baidu.com/s/1hueUZM8](https://pan.baidu.com/s/1hueUZM8)

I can't find a translation though.</comment>


Booting to 'Hello Rust' on x86_64 - <AUTHOR> https://micouy.github.io/posts/low-level-pt-1/ <comment><USER2> For those checking comments first: this is mostly a tutorial on how to build and link a 16/32 bit MBR loader and mode switch implementation in assembly. It's very similar to what you'll find on osdev.org. The Rust content is limited to a single function at the end which writes some characters to an assumed-pre-initialized EGA text console.

While modern hardware does continue to support these modes via various detection tricks, "real" handoff from the firmware happens in a 64 bit EFI environment these days, and the framebuffer tends to be in a graphics mode and expects to be accesesed initially via the exposed UEFI API (or to be reset from scratch by an OS graphics driver, of course).

This is fun and instructive, but not really reflective of the way modern hardware boots.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious to learn more about "real" handoffs and the EFI environment. If you had any suggestions about where to start I'd be grateful.

<comment><USER2> There's sort of a paucity of tutorials in that space. You're pretty much stuck reading specs and studying source code. Here's the UEFI specification and a link to the "gnu-efi" project, which provide a reasonably clean (if... idiosyncratic) environment for building and running EFI binaries with a free toolchain:

[https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Spec_2_8...](https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Spec_2_8_final.pdf)

[https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu- efi/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi/)

Broadly: EFI is a simple C environment (albeit one based on windows-style PE binaries and not ELF). The firmware will load and run your application binary and jump to its entry point, passing a giant table of API hooks and callbacks for you to use to interact with its services. You then read and assemble your own OS image using these tools and jump into it.

<comment><USER4> Personally, I haven't found the gnu efi toolchain very helpful. I just use clang with the appropriate flags, which are:

      -target x86_64-unknown-windows -ffreestanding -fno-builtin -fshort-wchar -mno-red-zone

And link, again with clang, using these flags:

      -target x86_64-unknown-windows -nostdlib -Wl,-entry:efi_main -Wl,-subsystem:efi_application -fuse-ld=lld-link

I believe you can do the same with gcc and gold|gnu ld without much more effort. The toolchain doesn't really justify its complexity at all.

The headers, on the other hand, are invaluable. I use c-efi[1]'s headers, but would probably use gnu efi another time; c-efi has some bugs and missing structures. Worth noting: despite the name, gnu efi isn't gpl licensed. In fact, I don't think either (c-efi or gnu efi) can really be considered copyrightable; they're essentially direct translations of the spec.

1\. [https://github.com/c-util/c-efi](https://github.com/c-util/c-efi)

<comment><USER4> Additionally, efi isn't useful for much beyond a bootloader, so you can use clang for the bootloader and gcc (or whatever else) for the OS itself. So you can depend on non-clang features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really appreciate posts like this and wish there were more of them. Tutorials by experts are valuable, but I also find it comforting to read that other people are sometimes as clueless as I am, and I think posts like this can end up explaining some of the pitfalls that some more expert users aren't really aware of. We need more humility in software.

(I remember that I had tried to write a bootloader myself in assembler, maybe 10 years ago or so, and in the end was just incapable of getting it to work.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I also wish there was more content like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If anybody enjoys this and wants to take it much further, you might want to check out [https://os.phil-opp.com/](https://os.phil-opp.com/). This is basically a book-in-progress that shows how to build an OS in Rust OS from scratch. It shows how boot up an OS, and it goes on to show how to set up basic drivers and memory management. He does a great job of explaining each step as he goes.

(This is linked near the end of the article, but I think it's worth pointing out.)

Full disclosure: I think he uses a library I wrote to initialize the keyboard controller.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's my first post. I'd appreciate your feedback :)

<comment><USER7> Hey, just a couple of points

1\. Don't link the bootsector and the rest of your binary together. It's more trouble than it's worth, and if you ever progress to loading off a filesystem, then you won't be linking them together anyway.

2\. You can use LBA addressing in real mode with int 13h (just specify a hard disk rather than a floppy when booting):

[https://wiki.osdev.org/ATA_in_x86_RealMode_(BIOS)#LBA_in_Ext...](https://wiki.osdev.org/ATA_in_x86_RealMode_\(BIOS\)#LBA_in_Extended_Mode)

3\. You need to switch to protected mode, set up paging, and then enter long mode.

4\. I'd recommend compiling your rust code to an ELF binary, and then using objcopy to create a binary:

        objcopy -O binary $input.elf $output.bin

Alternatively, ELF isn't that hard to parse, so you could load it yourself and then copy sections to the right locations with your bootsector.

5\. OSDev.org is your friend. Maybe get a C-based kernel running first, as the toolchain when dealing with freestanding code is a lot friendlier for beginners

\- [https://wiki.osdev.org/Protected_Mode](https://wiki.osdev.org/Protected_Mode)

\- [https://wiki.osdev.org/Long_Mode#Long_Mode](https://wiki.osdev.org/Long_Mode#Long_Mode)

You might be better off starting with 32-bit rust code instead, in order to avoid paging and long mode at first (you'll still need to switch to protected mode)

<comment><USER8> I am extremely biased, but I've always found the rust tool chain far easier than the C ones, especially as a Windows user. No need to set up a cross compiler, given that rustc already is one, and is easy to add more targets to via the JSON target spec.

<comment><USER7> A cross compiler is easy enough to set up with clang too (just specify the -target command line option).

I just think that when starting out in kernel development, you're likely going to be dealing with linker scripts for likely the first time. It's been a while since I tried rust for this, but C generates pretty clean object files, so the linker scripts from the OSDev wiki can often be copied verbatim.

<comment><USER8> That's fair re:clang, seems like gcc is used way more often in tutorials.

I don't think that the linker script stuff ends up different but it's been a minute since I started from scratch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Neat! I read The little book about OS development[1] and wrote this little OS in Rust a few years ago: [https://github.com/zacstewart/tinyos](https://github.com/zacstewart/tinyos)

1: [https://littleosbook.github.io/](https://littleosbook.github.io/)

</comment><comment><USER10> This post got me extremely excited, will have a read on the way home!

great job OP!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A relevant tutorial on making an OS in Rust but for RISC-V: [http://osblog.stephenmarz.com/index.html](http://osblog.stephenmarz.com/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> I did something similar many years ago using nothing but debug.exe that came with windows 95, a spare floppy and an older version of The Indispensible PC Hardware Book [0].

It was very satisfying seeing my PC boot to printing my name.

[0] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Indispensable-PC-Hardware- Book/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Indispensable-PC-Hardware- Book/dp/0201596164)

</comment><comment><USER13> Thank you for this!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> God Rusts syntax is off-putting.

</comment><comment><USER15> Boot to "FUCK RUST PROPAGANDA"</comment>


MacPorts 2.0 with Lion support now available - <AUTHOR> https://trac.macports.org/post/macports-200-now-available/

<comment><USER2> Upgrading to Lion is a great time to make the switch to Homebrew: <http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/>

<comment><USER3> Benefits over MacPorts? Which has more up-to-date packages?

<comment><USER4> Brew doesn't install the whole universe and take hours to install a small utility. MacPorts does.

<comment><USER5> Does brew compile from source? That is one of the most frustrating aspects of macports, for example I was trying to install a simple musical ear training tool the other day and it went to compile GCC. Argh!

<comment><USER6> The thing with MacPorts is, basically, you're installing a parallel universe that doesn't know about the software your system already had. So it has to bootstrap completely from scratch, including its own toolchain, basic libraries, etc.

Once you get all that, it goes faster, but the first time you go to install something simple you're basically going to walk away for a couple hours while it sets up its own little world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been a happy homebrew user since it launched - anyone care to comment on the benefits/improvements of MacPorts V2 over homebrew?

<comment><USER8> Last time I looked, MacPorts had a more paranoid approach to dependencies. That can be good and bad. Homebrew can be easier to use, until you run into a corner case that trips it up. MacPorts can be frustrating in how many dependencies it will insist on installing its own version even though the system-provided version might have worked.

I've gone back and forth. For a while homebrew could install a working GHC for me while I wasn't having any luck with MacPorts. Later something else caused me to switch back to MacPorts. Neither is perfect. Even MacPorts only allows dependencies at the package level, without regard to variants, or versions, if I recall correctly.

<comment><USER9> There are some variant packages, eg, php5.2.x vs 5.3.x

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Don't care. Switched to Homebrew. Much happier - no double-installs unless I want to, faster fixes, and waaaaay faster interaction. How MacPorts manages to run so slowly is beyond me.

MacPorts has been annoying since day one, but it _worked_ where there was nothing else truly competitive (Fink? Everything bad in MP, plus even slower updates. Only benefit is the sometimes-functional binary installs). Now we have Homebrew, and it's way better, if it has fewer legacy recipes (though not always).

</comment><comment><USER11> MacPorts 2.0 fixed all of the issues that I was having under Lion with 1.9.0. Thanks for upgrading guys! :)

To upgrade, make sure you install Xcode 4.1 via the App Store (free). That'll provide GCC. After:

        $ sudo port selfupdate
        $ sudo port upgrade outdated

All old versions of Xcode (4.0.x/3.x) do not work with Lion.

</comment><comment><USER12> New Mac user here (~5+ weeks). Just echoing what others have said about Homebrew here so far:

After some research, MacPorts looked painful to install/maintain so I went with Homebrew seeing as it looked like there was more activity going on there as well as being easy to contribute to via github and what looked like a short tutorial on creating and contributing your own packages (+ a bit of ruby knowledge) if I felt the need.

I like it simple. :)

<comment> brown9-2 As a point of contrast - I've been using OS X for about 8 weeks and I had some problems when first installing Homebrew (I do not remember the specifics, but I seem to recall some issues with installing iPython and the modules I wanted to use) - and since giving MacPorts a try I've really had no issues with it.

My only advice on MacPorts is to always do a dry-run before installing packages (port -y install), to see what dependencies will be dragged in - installing num.py wanted to re-compile a numerical computing package from scratch which I had to kill after a few hours of compilation (with no visible progress on the command line).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Had a problem (Macbook Pro, which I bought in Jan-2008) with upgrading to 2.0

After "debugging"-it, e.g: port -v self update

it gave me some mysterious problem of SQLite missing 64-bit version from... /Library/Mono.Framework/.../ _sqlite_.dylib - don't remember the details.

Found some notes how to uninstall mono from their site (little script), and then "port selfupdate" went fine.

</comment><comment><USER14> Congrats to the MacPorts team for 2.0 and lion support. It's unusual in a HN thread that most of the talk is about an alternative to the posted topic. However, I have to tip my hat to the work the MP team but it would be irresponsible to recommend it over Homebrew. Homebrew is what a package manager should feel like.

</comment><comment><USER15> Thanks to everyone involved!

</comment><comment><USER16> Is there any chance MacPorts would get the Terminal proxy icon to work with the fish shell?

</comment><comment><USER16> w3m crashes. Is there a workaround?

<comment><AUTHOR> Check if there already is a bug regarding w3m at

      https://trac.macports.org/search?q=w3m

If not, file one at:

      https://trac.macports.org/auth/login/?next=/newticket</comment></comment>


IMF Says Great Lockdown Recession Likely Worst Since Depression - ajay-d https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-14/imf-says-great-lockdown-recession-likely-worst-since-depression <comment><AUTHOR> Based on some of these comments, the degree to which so many are out of touch is unbelievable. 17 MILLION people have filed for unemployment and I'm sure this week will be another 6M as companies don't keep this much cash on hand.

Tech's been living in a bubble for a long time and reality is starting to hit. Get out and talk to real people, not your Slack buddies working in SF.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you but the high number of unemployment claims is also a feature of the bailout plans. Let's hope people will get hired back quickly.

<comment><USER3> My employer has just furloughed 30% of the company for 6 months. 6 freakin' months. And we were very profitable. This cut was not necessary to maintain neutral profit/loss...they want to keep profits up.

We're a software company backed by a brand name VC in SF. The board is in total meltdown.

<comment><USER2> Our system rewards people who relentlessly pursue their own advantage at the expense of others. The official talk is about shared sacrifice but the real winners are the ones who make others sacrifice. My company has a lot of problems but I really appreciate that they set out a goal to not lay off anybody. They could easily have laid off a lot of people but they didn't. This will probably not get rewarded in the stock market but it shows that the company is not run by complete sociopaths like many others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This certainly feels real to me. Yesterday, I was laid off from my job at Easypost. We had a very big and very painful layoff because my company took on way too much leverage. The circumstances of COVID19 were tough to foresee but I really wish we hadn't taken on so much debt while times were good.

I have experience in Go, Ruby, Python and I'm excited to hack again.

<comment><USER5> > It was no fault of our own because the circumstances of COVID were > impossible to foresee.

This is one of the biggest fallacies in modern finance. COVID was merely the catalyst which exposed terrible finances. The idea of unforeseeable black swans has become nothing more than a trope of an excuse that it's lost all meaning. Sure, the pandemic itself is a "black swan" but the subset/collection of events that lend itself to economic disaster is actually not that rare. Case in point: 9/11, Tech Bubble burst, Financial Crisis, Covid-19. This was all in a span of ~20 years.

So let's revisit this: Is economic collapse really that rare? No. But people construct their businesses as if they are, and we always see these house of cards tumble. The other group of businesses who acknowledge the possibility of an economic collapse subscribe to the false pretense that THEIR company is immune because they're so "essential." In both cases, growth at all costs seems to be the mantra. How is this sustainable beyond the Fed Lottery? At this point, it hasn't become a Lottery anymore.

<comment><USER6> Issue is that system in normal state favors "house of cards" companies. Both as simply value thing, but also in material financial terms.

In values, I have read a lot praise for risk taking over years and rewards for it. I have read comparatively less praise for prudent decision making or what happen when risk part of risk happen. People are said to get rich because they "took the risk" and are poor because they were either lazy or did not took risk. But the part when people take the risk and become poor is never said, as if we wanted to pretend it never happens.

In finances, companies that risk a lot and grow and now are about to fail are way more likely to be saved then a company that was more responsible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The economy is basically a big network of relationships; employee relationships, business relationships, etc. Unfortunately such relationships tend to break quickly and in a self reinforcing cascade but can only be rebuilt slowly as businesses find that there is enough profit margin and demand to bring new people in, one at a time. That's why recessions happen quickly and recovery time is proportional to how many people lose their jobs. You look at unemployment data for the last 50 years and the pattern is very simple: a rapid increase in unemployment and a steady recovery. The higher the spike, the longer the recovery. That being the case I would guess that the recovery from this shock will take a decade or more.

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp- content/uploads/2019/05/April-...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp- content/uploads/2019/05/April-Jobs-Report-1-820x493.png)

Edit: I can't make new posts. Someone has suggested that people will just be re-hired; historically, that has never happened. Not saying it's impossible but this would be the first time. You can't put a broken egg back together; entropy doesn't go in reverse. The old jobs don't come back, new ones are created, that's just the way it works.

<comment><USER8> It seems likely though that lots of people after the lockdowns will simply be re-hired once lockdowns are over.

<comment><USER9> Particularly a large portion of the service industry. Perhaps not all with some establishments potentially closing, but most will be called back. Large retail that has closed down as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the horse's mouth: [https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/04/14/we...](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/04/14/weo- april-2020)

</comment><comment><USER11> The important question is whether the recession due to the lockdown (which is at least useful for stopping the virus) will continue after the virus has passed and the lockdown is lifted.

<comment><USER12> There will be huge shift in structure of business.

Many small mom and pop shops are not coming back. Big chains, and franchises survive.

Permanent changes in customer behavior. Many people with resistance and habits against 'new ways' are forced to learn internet shopping and delivery. Their habits can change permanently.

<comment><USER13> The change in habits cuts both ways. I've bought from many small online stores recently as a result of the big retailers (inc Amazon) being totally sold out.

<comment><USER14> Similarly, I've been buying a lot more from smaller, local stores because the major chains are disasters. It's worth it to pay a few dollars more for groceries to avoid waiting in an hour-long line, for example.

Just as companies are re-thinking the fragility of supply chains that depend on a single country, maybe this will help counter-balance the consumer trends toward huge retail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't get what the point of still using the term "recession" is. Even if it's temporary, this is a full-blown depression right?

<comment><USER16> How is it a depression if it's only been a few months? Also the IMF article predicts a 3% contraction for 2020 and a 5.8% growth in 2021, so by what definition is this a depression?

<comment><USER15> An unemployment rate of around 13% (as of two weeks ago[1], so probably even higher now) doesn't seem like it's going to just magically resolve itself, and it's going to have drastic effects.

1\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/upshot/coronavirus- jobles...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/upshot/coronavirus-jobless-rate- great-depression.html)

<comment><USER16> That's just an estimate. From your link:

>Be warned, these numbers yield an imprecise estimate of today's unemployment rate, and the truth could easily be quite a lot higher or lower. This is not an estimate of the official unemployment rate for March, which reports the state of the economy a few weeks ago when the labor market was in better shape, nor is it a forecast for the official rate in April.

I don't find it useful to implicitly embed a financial forecasting model in the use of the term "depression".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a total dummy on macroeconomics, I find myself having the positive take "hey, we were probably moving towards some recession anyway, might as well get it over with in one go". I'm saying this because the graphs go up again in the not too distant future. Besides the obvious personal suffering that is going to be the consequence of this event on at least the short term, and under the uncertain assumption that we're making some return to normal life in 2020, is there any merit towards my naive optimism?

<comment><USER18> _hey, we were probably moving towards some recession anyway,_

That's a take that is gained from reading two many doom and gloom writers and not looking at the data.

The data shows that economies - on average - expand and have done consistently, long term since the renaissance.

Once you look at that, you see recessions as _mistakes_. Most large ones since the start of the 20th century have been caused by errors in the capital markets (1929, 1987, 2008) or commodity price shocks (1970s).

Perhaps the run up in stock prices should have been corrected. But that would have been a recession caused by a financial market correction, so another 2001 "dot com crash" style thing. Nothing like this.

 _is there any merit towards my naive optimism_

By most measurements this is the biggest economic shock since 1929 (and possibly larger). It's the first time we've have economic activity stop this quickly across so many industries all across the world ever (perhaps the black death in the 1300s was similar because many farms went unharvested because of the lack of labor - up to 80% of people died in some areas[1]).

It's possible this will turn around quickly. We certainly stopped things quicker than I would have believed was possible a 4 months ago.

But provided you understand that is an optimistic view and isn't really supported by history it's ok.

[1] [https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economic-impact-of-the- black...](https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-economic-impact-of-the-black-death/)

<comment><USER19> this is also different because there isn't an economic causal factor. we intentionally stopped everything. that didn't happen in 1929 or 2008 or the 70's, we collectively got together and said shut it down until we get a hold on this disease

<comment><USER20> > this is also different because there isn't an economic causal factor. we > intentionally stopped everything.

Yes we intentionally stopped things, but that would have happened either way as the disease spread and people got sick.

Look at the meat packing plant in SD where 1 case turned into ~300 and they had to shut down [1]. If we had not shut down things, that would be the story at workplaces across the country. Think about schools and universities throughout the country. If they had not shut down as the pandemic was ramping up, they would have become breeding grounds for the disease and would have had to shut down anyway as students and teachers fell ill.

Yes we shut down things intentionally but our hand was forced. The flip side of this is we cannot re-open things just as intentionally because the result will be a flare-up of cases. So while it may seem like we have control over when we start/stop the economy here, really the virus is controlling the timeline.

[1] [https://abc7news.com/smithfied-foods-coronavirus-meat- packin...](https://abc7news.com/smithfied-foods-coronavirus-meat-packing- plant-covid-19-industry-in-pork/6099688/)

<comment><USER21> I can't find the studies at the moment but there's at least one looking at previous pandemics that supports your suggestion. They found that economies that instituted weaker public health responses had bigger casualties from illness directly, and longer times to economic recovery because of bigger losses in personnel etc.

I wonder if lack of public health infrastructure in the us will come to haunt it in the coming months as other countries recover faster and get a head start. That sort of economic opportunity cost from not having more public health infrastructure tends to have been left out of past discussions completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I mean, by default, any economic crisis is always going to be worse than/bigger than the previous, just due to growth. Am I wrong for thinking this way?

<comment><USER23> This sort of thing is usually measured in percentage lost from the previous peak, or some other relative measure that corrects for the overall growth over time.

<comment><USER22> I'm not even talking about econometrics. As our supply chains become more and more integrated globally, as the amount of services built on top of each other continue to grow, and as the global economic system continues to use, build, and develop these services, any significant disruption is going to be more catastrophic than the previous which didn't rely on as much integration as it currently does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Except it can stop after 3months...

<comment><USER25> > it can stop after 3months

life?

<comment><USER24> Quarantine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's going to be worse than the Great Depression.

<comment><USER27> Nobody _knows_ for a fact how this will turn out, and if they say they do they are lying and vastly overestimating their own knowledge.

There are no modern equivalents to compare to, so the best thing we have is the Great Depression; but when you look at the circumstances, it's not exactly a comparison that gives you a lot of confidence.

First of all, the GD had purely financial causes. Over-speculation in the stock market, high debts, combined with a struggling agriculture sector. As reality dawned, a mass sell-off took place that snowballed into what we now know as "the Great Depression".

If we for the sake of argument assume that what's happening now is exactly what happened during the GD, you still have to take into account how different the world is today. We are no longer in a mostly industrial, manufacturing economy. Our capacity for producing everything that keeps people alive is higher than it has ever been, which is another way of saying that our economy is more efficient than it has ever been. This is why most people can "get away" with not producing essential goods: many, many people work in "non- essential" jobs (for survival) like the service sector.

The only sane thing to say right now is that noone knows exactly how this will turn out, but saying that things will be _worse_ than the GD is not only saying that the circumstances are way worse (that's absolutely not obvious to me), but also that our economy is _weaker_ than it was 100 years ago, which to me sounds quite absurd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Stock market doesn't seem to agree with this conclusion.

<comment><USER29> I don't know how anyone can trust the stock market right now. We're living in unprecedented uncertainty and on top of that, [literally] everything's closed and no one is buying anything, how can the economy possibly be growing like the market right now?

Hot air that will crash eventually.

<comment><USER30> 'analysts' say that a 'V-shaped' recovery is 'priced in'.

same 'analysts' mostly didn't notice a 11M city going into full lockdown.

<comment><USER31> Compared to the begging news wave that everyone was going to get infected and millions of death per state, an 11M city going into lockdown was definitely priced in

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The unemployment rate isn't even close to the 10% we saw after the '08 recession. Only about half. Does that mean that twice as many people are going to become unemployed, than are right now?

<comment><USER33> We won't have the numbers for sure until the end of the month, but based on the insane spike in initial claims [0], the US probably hit 10% last week [1].

That said, the past two weeks the claims seem to have hit their processing limit, with people still not getting through - it's guaranteed to continue rising for the rest of the month, past the numbers I have here.

[0] [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA)

[1] 3.3 million + 6.8 + 6.6 = 16.7 million, 16.7 / 160 million (number I've seen for estimated working-age people) = 10.4%, 10.4% + 4% (previous unemployment rate) = 14.4%

Quick edit, unemployment rate is updated monthly here: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE) \- based on when it updated, that 3.3 million is already included in the 4.4%, so actually more like 4.4% + ((6.8 + 6.6) / 160) = 12.8%-ish (and more than likely still rising)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> On the other hand, new streams of revenue as well as increases in existing revenue streams are emerging as a result of the lockdowns.

The question is, will these increases fully offset the permanent loss of existing revenues + the cascading costs of disruption due to things like job losses.

<comment><USER35> > _On the other hand, new streams of revenue as well as increases in existing > revenue streams are emerging as a result of the lockdowns._

For extremely fewer people...

> _The question is, will these increases fully offset the permanent loss of > existing revenues + the cascading costs of disruption due to things like job > losses._

It wont even be close...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think historians will look back at COVID-19 as a textbook way not to handle an emergency.

They will point out that 99% of deaths were related to economic effects of our response, not the disease itself.

Hundreds of millions will starve or die in failed states in an economic slowdown, while only hundreds of thousands die of disease.

<comment><USER37> How do people die from an economic slowdown? Maybe in poor countries but I don't think in a developed country an economic slowdown should kill anybody.

<comment><USER38> Poverty leads to higher suicide rates, e.g. [https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest- communities/articles/...](https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest- communities/articles/2020-01-27/higher-poverty-tied-to-increased-youth- suicide-risk-study-shows) . It also leads to people being generally less healthy and dying earlier: [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181123135003.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181123135003.htm) . If poverty leads someone who's currently 10 years old to die five years earlier, then in terms of loss-of-life-years it's similar to the loss if e.g. an 80 year old is killed by the virus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I find myself less interested in whether or not something is a recession or not. I mean, sure, the numbers of the economy are going down, but the big numbers don't necessarily mean much for anyone's personal life. Of course it can; losing your job is no fun. But the big reason why the Great Depression was so bad, is that we didn't have any social security back then. Unemployed meant having no income at all. No health insurance, no pensions, none of the things that people started fighting for exactly because of the Great Depression.

And because of that, these recessions and depressions are far less devastating than they used to.

Of course I'm saying this living in a rich country that does have all of these amenities; in poorer countries that don't yet take care of their poor (and possibly the US that chooses not to take care of its poor), things may still feel like the 1930s. But in a rich, well-organised country, there's really no need for that anymore. We can easily get through this is we want to. Skip a vacation, buy a luxury item less, make sure the poorest don't fall through the cracks (and there will be more cracks of course), and we'll be fine. The misery is mostly a political decision.

<comment><USER40> Look into unemployment system tech. In my state, its physically impossible to access it. Whenever you call or go online, it is straight up broken and dozens of contact attempts have yielded nothing.

Our economic system is not nearly robust enough for these suddenly 5-10% unemployed and underemployed citizens. We can not "easily get through this if we want to".

<comment><USER41> I can't speak to the states, but as a Canadian, my wife and I tried to tackle the communication problem together - it took us a collective 550 calls over the day to even make it to the "on hold" queue, and I'm pretty sure making into the queue was purely by luck - my wife continued trying and never got through. The system is completely overwhelmed.</comment></comment></comment>