Ask HN: What strong belief of yours has changed since the pandemic started? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I live in Toronto, which has been a super hot real estate market for the last decade. I was almost certain that prices would tank in the next financial crisis. Was in the market to buy for 18 months. Bought my first property early 2020. When covid hit, I was certain I bought at the peak, and that I was in for the biggest financial hit of my life. Turns out the federal government and big banks would bail out land owners at _any_ cost, through emergency relief money and mortgage payment deferrals. The real estate market is now booming again with almost everything listed receiving multiple offers.

</comment><comment><USER3> \- Any faith I had in the US federal government has completely crumbled.

\- Much faith in state government has crumbled.

\- The notion that facts, evidence, and science will ultimately win out with the American people. People seem to be largely-meme and social media driven -- on both sides of the political aisle. You could utilize such propaganda to reverse their views in a matter of hours.

\- The notion that the American people will hold strong to their beliefs. Which is not true in the least. They are easily swayed. Again, this is on both sides of the political aisle.

Eg. right-wing-leaning preppers stocking gas masks and N95 masks for a theoretical pandemic and then not wearing them for an actual pandemic because "fake news".

\- And something positive? At the local level, Americans seem to be rising to the occasion and helping each other out. There's not much dead weight.

</comment><comment><USER4> School choice and school vouchers.

It's a moral right: parents (and children) should have the option to choose where they want to go to school, and the funding should follow the child. Now, if you want schools to reopen, you just send your child to one that is reopening. If you want to be cautious, you send your child to an online school or homeschool them with the help of the funding and online educational programs.

</comment><comment><USER5> That despite Trump making noise, the US Federal govt would at still kick in and do it's thing in an emergency. That confidence has been deeply shaken, and it's hard to have faith in the US as a stable country moving forward.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think any of my beliefs have changed.</comment>


How to Get Continuous Integration Right - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/how-to-get-continuous-integration-right-77bda4bc0d1f <comment><USER2> > More often than not, you end up with a broken release right after you merge > back your feature branch.

How does this happen? Are you talking about merge conflicts? Or actual releases that get deployed that don't work?</comment>


More people work remotely than take public transit to work - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/09/28/fastest-growing-commute-is-no-commute-all/ <comment><AUTHOR> For the US only, but I didn't realize that so few people took public transit, walked, or biked. Given the amount of advocacy and public policy surrounding those transportation modalities, I find it curious that there isn't more advocacy around remote work/telework.</comment>


Evaluation in Natural Language Processing - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@soegaarducph/yoavs-recent-blog-post-sparked-a-lot-of-interest-across-different-communities-and-many-have-5b6a6c794887 <comment><USER2> Which language?</comment>


JS copy to clipboard (flash not required) - <AUTHOR> http://zenorocha.github.io/clipboard.js/ <comment><USER2> Now that this is possible, is there anything that Flash is actually necessary for?</comment>


ReactOS 0.4.9 released - <AUTHOR> https://reactos.org/project-news/reactos-049-released <comment><USER2> The output of CHKDSK in the screenshot there makes for interesting reading. It would be interesting to know whether the equivalent amount of effort has been put into the NTFS driver for CHKDSK, which after all has a BPB to dump as well.</comment>


Voyager 1 Fires Up Thrusters After 37 Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2017-310 <comment><AUTHOR> See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15827369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15827369)</comment>


Everything Old Is New Again, and a Compiler Bug - <AUTHOR> https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2016/09/16/everything-old-is-new-again-and-a-compiler-bug/ <comment><USER2> I realize how much more I have to learn in reading bugfix blog posts like these.

<comment><USER3> Luckily much of the knowledge needed to solve this bug is rarely needed.</comment></comment>


DiceWARE - <AUTHOR> http://www.dicewarepasswords.com/ <comment><USER2> i do the same thing, but not with dice. using random words concatenated is a good way.

Unfortunately, many systems insist on numbers, upper/lower or other symbols. in these cases i resort to a generator that makes up a stupidly crazy string just so it can't reject it again. if it does, i just give up and don't use the service anymore.</comment>


Google Just Broke Internet Radios on Chrome Desktop and Android - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=669800#c5 <comment><AUTHOR> (OP) Streaming Shoutcast Version 1 Radios on Chrome V55 and above, just don't work because Google fixed a bug. Bug fixes like this which has significant impact on a much larger scale Google should have given advanced warning or at least some time, so that folk could migrate shoutcast from version 1 to version 2.

I am running an Online Radio website and have an streaming app (hybrid) in Play store. More than 50% stations just don't work.

As per their comments, (one of the most hilarious one), they are saying, since safari did this hence they had to. They wont revert this change or apply any work around.</comment>


Show HN: A Global Co-Living Subscription for Nomads - <AUTHOR> http://www.thecaravanserai.co/ <comment><USER3> This is a really interesting idea, though maybe a bit too expensive and, ah, "hip" for my tastes. (Currently hopping from Airbnb to Airbnb flatshare, paying $1000 or less a month for housing with internet and utilities included. Would be even cheaper if I wasn't in Western Europe.)

I've been thinking lately of where I would like to live for most of my late twenties and early thirties. I'm definitely a bit of a loner, but at the same time, I like living as part of a close-knit community. I wish I could find a little "tribe" of self-directed folks roughly my age in an old, creaky house somewhere in the mountains... or on a remote island... or in a forest, or something. Just people working on their projects, tending to their garden, raising some chickens (or maybe some kids), enjoying the fresh air, and mostly living away from the rest of society. An art commune for the 21st century, I guess.

Unfortunately, if such a place exists, I doubt it has a website, and I especially doubt they'd take in strays. Guess I'd have to organize it myself. It's too bad I don't know anyone else who'd want to live like this. (And even if I did, who knows if we'd get along?)

Maybe I'll just go and become a hermit.

<comment><USER4> Hey archagon - you should check out our group: hackerparadise.org

We've already run a co-living, co-working trip in Costa Rica and are about to begin another one in SE Asia.

<comment><USER5> Hey Caser,

Very interested in applying - are you still accepting applications? I saw the first trip starts this month.

<comment><USER4> Hey Jay - yes we're still accepting applications. You can join us part-way through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You've probably already thought about this, but you might want to make sure clients understand the legal side of things. We've certainly had some cases at Mozilla where remote workers had to be "reminded" that we could only pay them if they maintained residency in their official company of employment, that they would be in violation of the tourist visa they had traveled to these other locations under if they worked there for 3 months, etc.

It's a bit of a minefield, and I only know the warnings that legal/HR tell managers :-)

<comment><USER7> > You've probably already thought about this, but you might want to make sure > clients understand the legal side of things.

I doubt that for $1600 a month this includes all the legal paperwork in order to work in Portugal, Mexico and Indonesia.

It's another abuse of the visa-free status many Westerners are given by countries that wish to attract tourists.

This is the second one I've seen today. First is here - [http://drrn.net/why- did-i-move-to-thailand-to-bootstrap-my-s...](http://drrn.net/why-did-i-move- to-thailand-to-bootstrap-my-startup/)

 __Edit: I 'm not aware of any new Thai visas being announced. It definitely would have been mentioned on ThaiVisa.com. Please post a link. __

<comment><AUTHOR> Things are changing very fast atm, as most countries realize that it's a good group of people to have.

Eg Thailands new 6 months Visa explicitly includes remote work.

<comment><USER8> Portugal, as of a few years back, allows one to (theoretically) continually renew their 90-day tourist visa. In a few other EU countries (like Denmark), it's possible to stay an extra 90 days per their own non-Shengen laws.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/travel/comments/1e83wv/extra_90_days...](http://www.reddit.com/r/travel/comments/1e83wv/extra_90_days_visa_free_in_denmark/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have you considered having some storage in the house that automatically follows you around the world as you move from place to place ? i.e. your belongings just turn up at the house you are currently staying in without you having to deal with shipping?

Edit: to clarify/simplify

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very high up the list, bulk shipping of standardized boxes is the favorite solution atm, but didn't do in-depth cost comparisons etc.

Just was stuck for a few days in the Alps with the overhead bin luggage for Bali on the way back to SF, so i feel your pain.

How would you prefer to have it handled?

<comment><USER9> I would love to be able to travel between one of your houses in London to Bali with only a carry on luggage (e.g. a few days clothes and my laptop) - <USER2> have a box of clothes follow me within the week.

Clothes are probably a good place to start. Having a simple cupboard draw that is automatically sent would be good (cost permitting).

\- Most people shouldn't have a problem with you searching through this sort of thing for illicit goods

\- I think it is mainly clothes that take up the bulk of space in peoples suitcases

\- Clothes can be compressed for space/cost efficiency

Edit: added an extra thing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Love the modular idea of literally using the drawer (we plan something similar for the kitchen cold storage).

Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wait...you've named your startup "Caravanserai" and you _don 't_ have any destinations on the actual historical Silk Road? For shame!

Turkey is an amazing place to work and live, there's an incredibly vibrant hacker community, and the people are some of the most welcoming in the world (especially if you're a visitor). Istanbul rents on the European side can run pretty high, but on the Asian side (and with the way the exchange rate is going these days), I think you'd be remiss to leave it out.

If not Istanbul, Ankara has a bunch of universities and rents are considerably cheaper. Bodrum, too, has relatively low rents and absolutely _amazing_ natural beauty. Ok, enough ranting...

Seriously cool concept, though. I look forward to seeing where you take it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, true dat.

We looked at Istanbul, but it was prohibitively expensive, at least for our Beta batch where we reserve certain safety buffer for things that could go wrong and in the neighborhoods we looked at.

Coastal towns like Bodrum could be a nice choice, any areas in Istanbul we should reconsider?

<comment><USER10> Other places to check: Üskudar, Kadiköy, Maltepe, and Kartal...pretty much anywhere along Bağdat street will still have a lively atmosphere, good access to transportation, and low _er_ rents. The Asian side is actually growing faster than the European side, so while Beyoğlu is still the focus of social life in Istanbul, Bağdat Cadessi is pretty active. Also, Sabiha Gökçen Airport (on the Asian side) has a growing number of very cheap connections to destinations in the area.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Very much so.

<comment><USER11> Alanya is a beautiful coastal city in Turkey with reasonable prices. [http://www.hello-alanya.com/](http://www.hello-alanya.com/) Sarajevo in Bosnia is inexpensive and programmer friendly. [http://www.sarajevotimes.com/hub387-launches-first- regional-...](http://www.sarajevotimes.com/hub387-launches-first-regional- startup-accelerator/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not to rain on your parade, but isn't it a bit disingenuous to compare your cost with living in NY or SF? I mean, of course it's _much_ cheaper to live in Lisbon or Mexico City, regardless of the particular accommodation.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, anyone considering a digital nomad lifestyle isn't typically looking at NYC or London; the most popular destination of Chiang Mai is rated at $638/month all-in[1], and most have rent $300-$500 /month, not $1500.

I really love the concept but as presented it isn't appealing. The idea of not having to deal with all the hassle of finding and organising accommodation is great.. but they only have (and not even that yet) 3 locations. "hey you can travel the world (3 locations)" doesn't have so much appeal. Obviously they plan on expanding but the price is for now, not the future.

I suspect that if someone decides to stay for more than a couple of months they will often splinter off into cheaper accommodation. Having the fixed fee also makes it difficult to set up in the most sensible (cheapest) areas.. because the attraction of going it alone in those areas will be higher the better value the area is.

It strikes me they would have been better off setting up a handful of these locations _first_ as individual nomad/co-habitation accommodation, ironing out all the issues, and _then_ introducing the go-anywhere subscription idea. They've left themselves an awful lot to deal with in one go.

1\. nomadlist.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! We tried doing as you described, but the way we wanted it to be can only be done if you own the whole stack, thus building it ourselves.

It's a completely different target group, what you describe is being done nicely by people like nomadhouse.io and a lot of single location providers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sounds like someone just renamed "timeshare."

<comment><USER15> To me, this sounds like a very high end version of a hostel.

<comment><USER3> A hostel composed of single rooms with office space is... like... just living. In a house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was hoping that AirBnB would do something like that. Great initiative! I'll add this to my list [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote- job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

<comment><USER17> Hey, great list! I want to start working remotely soon and will make sure to go through most of the links you curated there. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Excuse my language, but this is fucking awesome. As an aspiring technomad and serial minimalist, I want to thank you for such great idea and execution. My only fear is that the current service might be quite steep for the average nomad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, appreciated, including the language. The good thing is: We only need 120 good people to make it work.

And we hope there are many more in cities like NY, SF or London.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The concept is really nice!

BUT WHY OH WHY THE SCROLL HIJACKING?

<comment><USER20> This isn't scroll hijacking. This -> [http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/#menu=source- page](http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/#menu=source-page) is scroll hijacking. Just because it's animating when you scroll doesn't mean it's hijacking.

Hijacking is specifically altering the speed and or movement of the scroll.

<comment><USER21> Oh my god. Why

<comment><USER22> That's going to look so retro in 2020 when they get the budget to replace it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra This is a very nice idea already.

What should they do to make me really happy? Be able to invest some sum of money (or an existing property?) and enjoy a lifetime of co-living (they need much more destinations, of course). This can be a nice mode of rapid growth, property in exchange to co-living promise.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish there was a "really, really upvote this comment" button on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I had been hoping that this would eventually emerge from the nomad community - it's a great idea.

The inclusion of a moped or shared vehicle in each location would seal the deal for me.

<comment><USER24> I can see why they didn't include this. I don't know about Portugal, but I've driven in Mexico and I know people who have attempted to drive in Bali. If you're not from there, I don't recommend it. You might be fine on most of your trips, but eventually the assumptions you have about driving from your home will be violated, and there will be an incident that will cost you money. If the car belonged to this company it would also cost them money.

One of the perks of cheap locations is that hiring a cab is cheap. Also you can ride a bike. Also driving is the _least_ relaxing way to experience any of these places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> While not sure about this particular business model, it is the first good use case for container hotel rooms I've ever seen.

Standardized rooms all over the world, run as a network of independent providers adhering to the international code of practice, advertised and paid for on AirBNB (because we already have hassle free hotel check in experience, why build another one).

... and stuffed with IKEA furniture we all know and love :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Containers are indeed a great idea for less permanent locations, otherwise solid constructions beats containers after a few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is a neat idea, but seems quite expensive, also the price comparisons are a bit unfair.

I can't speak for NY, but in London, you could get a nice room in a shared flat for 890 GBP (=1356 USD) on the edge of first zone, so the commute (monthly Underground ticket for zones 1&2) would be a much more reasonable 130 GBP (=200 USD), far from 698 USD as listed on the site.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, the effect of the price comparison for me was ... "hang on a minute, I could add a desk in a shared workspace to my central London room rental costs and it would _still_ be less than the rate for the hackerspace in Bali"

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interesting Project Question: How can you make sure, that every Nomad has a place to stay in each destination? If you limit the time one can spend at a destination, the living costs would be exponentially higher as the flight costs technically affect the flat rate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Honest answer is we have to optimize this as we go. You can switch in monthly increments, first come first serve, if this leads to problems there'd be additional rules like that you have to switch every n month or can only spend as many in one location per year etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Internet in Indonesia is ridiculously cheap. For $500 a month you'll have a very nice place in Bali. No need for a year lease.

3g Internet in Portugal is a little bit expensive. Not too bad -- about 2 euro a Gig. 500 euros a month will get you a nice place. Not sure about how long a lease you'd need to sign.

Mexico City. Why on earth would you want to go to Mexico City?

<comment><USER30> "Mexico City. Why on earth would you want to go to Mexico City?"

Because the most beautiful and exciting city on Earth is full of artists, programmers, scholars, great street food, great fancy restaurants, museums, history, good looking and outgoing young locals, sports clubs, perfect weather, rugged mountain wilderness, organic ripe produce year round, religious pilgrimage sites, great universities, live music and theatre, pretty architecture, peaceful parks, lively squares and plazas, fast easy transit and bikeshare programs, and a constant parade of special events.

Plus, if you're earning in euros or dollars, it's cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sign a simple lease, travel the world? This is incredibly tempting. ;)

</comment><comment><USER32> I can't wait to do it. Definitely in. It's awesome that you're taking the leap to make your spaces connected across countries. And a +1 for the idea of moving boxes around from country to country.

As an aside I can't understand why, as a first step, co-working spaces in different locations haven't partnered up to offer this to people looking to move around and sort out their own accommodation. Having the availability of, say, Regus offices, with the entrepreneurship and tech focus found in current co-working spaces would be a huge plus.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Tony, thanks! WeWork is working on this, in Europe you have things like [https://copass.org/](https://copass.org/) launched by Betahaus and others.

Co-working is extremely interesting for us, as there are many lessons why some worked and scaled, and why most of it didn't. A lot to learn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is an awesome idea and I'm very interested.

\- Are there more locations that are considered?

\- Is this meant to grow with demand, or be limited to a few first-come/first- served offering?

\- It's not clear to me (maybe I misread) what happens when I move to another country. Am I holding a lock on the rooms everywhere, or am I allocated a room on request?

I work remote, and currently in school but once done, I totally want to start moving around the world for periods of times. Q1 2016 is about when that should start happening.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of, from Greek fishing villages to Oakland, growing by demand.

The rooms are allocated on request, month-wise, we hopefully figure out a good & fair system for everyone and you're more than welcome to switch informally with others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Isn't this just a new twist on time sharing, but in places that people who haven't lived abroad think are "cool"?

$1,600 is more than a little pricey....

</comment><comment><USER35> It took me a while to realize that I was supposed to scroll. I spent like 15 seconds trying to click something. Might want to make that more obvious.

</comment><comment><USER36> If they can provide decent internet I'm in.

</comment><comment><USER37> cool concept, but not sure Mexico City is a good location. I've heard it can be very dangerous, especially in the evenings.

<comment><USER38> Mexico City has extremely affordable and good quality fibre internet in central areas (where you would want to live anyway), and the food options are amazing. It's as safe as long as you stay aware of your surroundings and use a taxi service. Many parts of Mexico are safe to travel, especially in high tourism areas. I assume the property would be in the Condesa or Roma area. You'll see americans and europeans walking around everywhere and feel quite at home.

<comment><USER30> "assume the property would be in the Condesa or Roma area."

I hope so. Polanco is too snooty. The Historic Center has gotten viable for living with residential redevelopment and revolutionary traffic calming but still has a touristy vibe. I like family-oriented Del Valle but it's probably better for a 40 year old than a 20 year old.

Coyoacán's ayuntamiento discourages short term residents and has driven almost all hotels out of the area, but would make a good location close to the National University and lively streets and parks.

I think Startup Weekend was in the Condesa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Cool concept if I understand correctly but of course would have to see how it plays out in practice. (Wonder how easy it will be to switch locations in practice.) The price sounds a bit high for those interested in nomadism. Beautiful website but I'd suggest taking "Hahaha" off the utility price and just put a 0 or included.

</comment><comment><USER40> You might want to look into localizing your numbers. Having amounts in USD/mo and then showing it using a decimal as the thousands separator feels silly, even though it makes sense in MX. Something like [http://formatjs.io/](http://formatjs.io/) can help.

<comment><USER30> MX does not use . as thousands separator or , as decimal separator. It uses the symbols rationally and correctly just as the other North American nations do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This looks awesome, I'm definitely interested.

I also found Coconat [1] on HN, and got in touch with them over email. Hopefully my wife and I will be visiting them when they open in July.

[1]: [http://coconat-space.com/](http://coconat-space.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> There's so much incredible stuff around Berlin, favorite so far is [https://www.google.com/search?q=Beelitz- Heilstätten](https://www.google.com/search?q=Beelitz-Heilstätten)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's an interesting idea, but it's also pretty obvious this is a for-profit venture by OP. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I'd like to see something similar in more of a cooperative legal structure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree (also waiting for someone to recreate Uber as a protocol).

Not sure where Artur is heading with nomadhouse.io , but that might be an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Bug Report: on Firefox on Linux, after pressing "I'm interested" does not appear any message. Maybe email is not even sent, a quick look show a ping sent to intercom that could be enough. Chrome on Linux is ok.

</comment><comment><USER44> Nice idea... But I definitely would not live for more than a week or 2 in 2 of the 3 places listed (Mexico City, Ubud). Lisbon is fine thought.

Why did you choose Ubud instead of other places in Bali?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's most central, so no matter if you want to surf in Uluwatu, have drinks in Canggu or go spearfishing in Amed, you can reach all of Bali quite easily.

I do get the slightly bad esoteric rep Ubud has, but it also got a very vibrant "getiing shit done" community.

Are your doubt more about location or other issues?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Minor discrepancy:

On the global map, Mexico City is linked to SF, NY, and Bogotá, while the text description says: "SF, NY or _Caribbean_ for a day".

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, will update later today once the HN onslaught is quieting down a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Pretty cool idea, and beautifully designed website. Any idea on what this type of design would be called and/or how its done?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, if you refer to the site you can fork it anytime at [https://github.com/brunohaid/houseofcards](https://github.com/brunohaid/houseofcards) but it's still utterly broken on mobiles, will release a better version hopefully soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why did you decide for subscription model? It makes sense for me if you have a network of 10+ locations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats the goal, 3 locations on 3 continents is the MVP so to speak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Can my girlfriend come?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, we even think about providing daycare on site, so if you want to spend some quality time as couple / young parents that should be a good experience.

<comment><USER11> Any age restriction?

<comment><USER49> For the girlfriend?

<comment><USER11> In general, young or old, male or female, participant or companion?

<comment><AUTHOR> No age restrictions, actively gender balanced, we don't really make the latter distinction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> The biggest question becomes: income taxes.

Any ideas how that will play out?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a giant topic, as always, especially if you choose to spend a critical time threshold at a certain location (> ~6 months a year normally). We do plan to offer informal advice on topics like this as a service, but there are so many options (keep residing in your home country, choose a location like Estonia etc) that it's hard to do this as a legally binding service.

But again: It's manageable, literally millions of people do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Something, something globalized gentrification.

<comment><AUTHOR> One could argue that global gentrification is inherently impossible...

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Can I split the cost with my partner?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. Pricing is per room.

<comment><USER53> You do understand that is where hotels make money, right? And that you're doing the opposite, right?

Now, joking aside, that is awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> This is great.

</comment><comment><USER55> I just don't dig the locations. I'm not going anywhere close to large groups of Muslim Extremists, or Narcoterrorists.

I guess I'm just spoiled by the relative safety of the US.

<comment><USER56> Many people in Ubon, Mexico City and Lisbon probably think the US is unsafe after watching TV & movies set in inner-city LA and Detroit, Baltimore & Albuquerque, et cetera.

<comment><USER55> So? Ubon and Lisbon are too close to HOT wars being waged by violent islamists. I have no intention of being within 100 miles of Detroit either...</comment></comment></comment>


Everything Is Broken (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1 <comment> f- I hate to be negative, but I've been working in the security industry for several decades now and... the article reads to me like a collection of condescending platitudes that attribute malicious intent or extreme incompetence to just about any person other than the author. Jumping back and forth between Snowden, PDF attachments, and C memory safety does not help.

The online world is not particularly horrible; we overwhelmingly use it by choice, not out of necessity, and the benefits far outstrip the risks. Sure, it's also far from being great, and the _genuine_ difficulty of designing complex systems in a secure way plays a role in this (heck, between all the interested parties, we can't even really define what "secure" means in practical terms). But it's not because everybody else is dumb.

While I generally hate analogies like this, I think there are quite a few parallels between the online world and the physical realm, where we seldom settle on absolute security. You have a $10 door lock that can be opened with a paperclip, protecting probably in excess of $5,000 in electronics within your home. In that realm, we are far better accustomed to the trade-offs, in part because we have more intuitive data about what can go wrong. We also take a more dim view of a burglar than of a hacker, which makes us assign the blame a bit differently.

In any case, with online security in particular, there some paths forward, including fairly plausible incremental strategies (better UX in the browsers and operating systems, better developer guidance, better mitigations, a culture of fuzzing and other security testing as a part of QA, etc). There are also some ambitious revolutionary dreams ("New everything! In Rust!") that may actually pan out if enough people get behind them. But I'm not sure what this article is hoping to achieve.

<comment><USER2> > we can't even really define what "secure" means in practical terms

I'd suggest a very practical approach here: A system is only secure if the value required to break it is higher than the value that can be obtained by breaking it.

<comment><USER3> We can't even really define what value means in practical terms.

Edit: Bank account information is valuable, but it's also one account number change away from being valueless.

<comment><USER4> We _chose_ not to define what value means in practical terms, with Internet infrastructure. That is to say, we allow unlimited access to compute resources using conditionals, which themselves may or may not be valuable, or secure.

By turning the golem on its head, and making compute resources use value to return value, we will eliminate this problem. That won't be easy and it won't happen immediately, but it will happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> (read top comment rambling)

I had an odd thought today about the internet. I was listening to a podcasts (How I built this) and it was about AOL how the internet used to be illegal to connect to, modems, etc...

It's just odd to me how we connect to the internet and we don't even see a screen, we're connecting to someone else's computer (though it's a public- facing server or whatever) but I don't know. Then you create the interface and your brain maps it out where things are. Even though it's all representative ahhhh. I don't know, I'm not really going anywhere with this but damn, I'm glad to be here now in this time. Though I wouldn't mind being in the future being some space pilot or something.

<comment><USER6> I want some of whatever you're smoking.

<comment><USER5> What I was smoking is exhaustion /staying up too late. Now my day will be ruined because of this. Oh well. Got some stuff done at least. But then I wonder/start to question myself, am I delusional. Proof is in the money I guess.

<comment><USER6> I've been there. Get some rest.

<comment><USER5> Going to work to wash plates ha. Got my podcasts and my solitude. One... is the loneliest... numbah that you'll evah doooo...

Anyway thanks

<comment><USER5> Kind of funny how money on my screen are just digits, I could just open up the console and edit the amount displayed but you know... it's not real haha. I'm still poor as hell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> (I did not read the entire text)

A great many of the security issues that we are seeing in computing are mainly due to fundamental, architectural decisions (it's probably in the text), but it's not as if there is no choice. We had and we still have hardware and architectures that are not memory-oriented and don't use memory-protection, but are fundamentally object-based and use object permissions (i.e. ACLs), enforced at a hardware level. It's just that when these were introduced they were complex and either too expensive or too slow for the mass market, hence simpler architectures prevailed (and no one could've expected otherwise) in the mass markets (desktops, laptops, mobile, computer servers).

The difference between these approaches boils down to memory-oriented systems being fail-open, information-dissemination machines, while object and permission oriented systems are meant to be fail-closed, information- protection machines _at the hardware level_ (before adding millions of lines of C code distributed across rings -2 to 0).

Note how successful information security nowadays tends to be based on similar principles, e.g. SGX or the Enclave on iDevices — the main processor and the main OS are so completely and fundamentally untrustworthy that you throw in either another completely separate computer, or strong-arm (some pun intended) protections at the hardware level, e.g. encrypting memory so the host can't read it, since it is _physically unable to access the key_.

<comment><USER8> Most security issues we are seeing today are simply a consequence of economic decisions. Omitting security gives one an advantage in time-to-market. "Security can be dealt with later."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ironically, every time I read an article on Medium I get a warning that some web content has crashed. I have no idea what causes this, but it seems unlikely to be anything good.

<comment><USER10> It happened to me about a hundred times during the course of reading that article on an iPad with latest IOS. Very difficult to make it to the end.

My guess is bloated active content in support of advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Counterpoint: things are pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER12> In the future it's going to blow people's minds that software engineers were ever allowed to work on systems that touch people's personal information without a license.

<comment><USER13> Barbers used to perform surgery.

I wonder if in the future there's going to be a divergence in the field of software between programmers who do the software equivalent of haircuts <insert PHP joke here> and those who do the "hard work", whatever that will be.

<comment><USER7> We already have people that perform the software equivalent of rocket brain surgery...

ANFSCD: Have a free laugh: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it really surprising that the brokenness of the online world resembles its real world counterpart?

</comment><comment><USER15> Even in 2014, I'm not sure what the takeaway was supposed to be from this, or why this was an article that needed writing. Was it the author's concern that laypeople felt computing was too reliable, too secure? The real problem is the opposite one.

<comment><USER16> I believe this is partially a "Chicken Little" response to the "Fishbowl Singularity" we've suddenly thrust ourselves into - a number of individuals panicking about living under constant (governmental, advertising, etc) surveillance, as a byproduct of our internet-connected lives.

On the other side, there are many more vulnerable IoT devices and CVEs today than there were in 2014, but even then the problem was evident. As another poster has pointed out, the solution seems to hide behind software ACLs and hardware devices, and hope that those are not also compromised.

As an alternative - "Welcome to the fishbowl, please do not swear."

<comment><USER17> How can you possibly imagine that this wont be used asymmetrically to a dystopian degree?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I enjoyed the article. But then, I also think that everything is broken. So hey.

Still, fonts where "0" (zero) and "o" (the lowercase letter) look the same are perverse.

</comment><comment><USER19> If we could go back and do it all over again, we'd probably do a better job. Maybe.

<comment><USER20> We'd do just as bad, but differently. Time makes fools of us all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> (2014)

<comment><USER16> _Sung to the tune of "Everything is Awesome" from the Lego movie._

      Everything is broken, everything is hacked when you're on wifi!
      Everything is broken, when you're living out a cloud!

</comment></comment><comment> d--b > Build it badly, and they will come.

Good one.</comment>


iOS 10 and macOS Sierra Public Betas - <AUTHOR> https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/ <comment><USER2> Are default apps being unbundled as well?

[https://twitter.com/ow/status/742409737552171008](https://twitter.com/ow/status/742409737552171008)

Did I miss this in the keynote?

<comment> k-mcgrady :O I hope that's real. I didn't see any mention in the keynote and it seems weird they'd be on the App Store now and they wouldn't wait until iOS 10 is released.</comment></comment>


Nebraska man developing world's first 'warp drive' in his garage - <AUTHOR> http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/make-it-so-nebraska-man-developing-worlds-first-warp-drive-in-his-garage/ <comment><USER2> There is no technical information, no theoretical model, no working prototype, no published article, ... It's the physics equivalent of vaporware.</comment>


The Pentagon's 'Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure' - <AUTHOR> https://warisboring.com/we-love-the-pentagons-encyclopedia-of-ethical-failure-21f2a08e38e0 <comment><USER2> The link to the doc of the Encyclopedia 404s for me - this link (PDF) works: [http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/defense_ethics/dod_oge/eef_complete...](http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/defense_ethics/dod_oge/eef_complete.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Inspector General of AirForce - Report of Investigation (S8011P): [https://cryptome.org/2013/12/nuke-commander-nukes- self.pdf](https://cryptome.org/2013/12/nuke-commander-nukes-self.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a government agency that calls things by their names: mostly.

How about this one? "the brother-in-law was treating the inspector to an evening with a lady of dubious morals."

I doubt the lady in question had dubious morals. She surely knew exactly what she was doing and exactly why. Why not call her a "sex worker?"

The dubious morals? the two men involved.

<comment><USER5> Dubious morals is a more prozaic title than sex worker. Horizontal service provider would be another one.

<comment><USER6> There's no evidence the service provided was horizontal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My favorite section from the essay was that it highlights the problem with a lot of modern news reporting: we typically don't see a resolution. An incident happens, we froth over it for a while, and then we move on to the next. Maybe I feel so stressed out all the time because of all of these open loops.

</comment><comment><USER8> "They had properly listed the restaurant stop in their mission plan. Since the stop was properly listed, the soldiers had not violated any regulations, but they still received verbal counseling because their actions created an appearance of impropriety."

I wonder if they where very loud in the restaurant? That they got clearance to stop the blackhawk is clearly the "violation" here, as long as they weren't to smug about it afterwards.

<comment><USER9> Depending on how near they landed the Blackhawk it would probably be louder than the patrons. Mind you, I've seen someone land a small helicopter at a pub before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't work in the public sector but I'm curious, how does one protect their browsing habits on a work computer?

I see there are a lot of cases of personal computer usage. While browsing 'sexually explicit' material at work is just plain stupid, I know I'm guilty of logging into my personal e-mail or browsing Hacker News' latest.

<comment><USER9> Firstly, check your policy.

Then check whether it's actually enforced. Ask around. See if other people are routinely personally browsing.

If the admins are serious about it, they're monitoring you at the firewall. Or snooping your screen. Just don't mess with this. Comply with the policy or browse on your phone instead.

If there's no real enforcement, then the policy is a figleaf. _If_ someone is abusing it _and_ someone complains, it will be used against them.

If you're handling actual personal confidential or classified material on your computer, be very careful. If it gets compromised and traced back to an infection on your PC then the policy may be used against you there too.

Try not to do personal business on your work email, even in Europe this is not legally protected: [http://www.eversheds.com/global/en/what/publications/shownew...](http://www.eversheds.com/global/en/what/publications/shownews.page?News=en/ireland/personal- emails-at-work-have-employers-more-access)

BYOD tends to erase the "work/personal" distinction, so watch out for other policies that try to enforce it. It may not be worth BYOD.

<comment><USER11> A few tips: Figure out whether you can clear your browser's cache and history, also find or figure out IT's strategy for desktop backups.

Also find or figure out what sort of network monitoring is in place, and where. If you're a developer, consider places you can shoehorn a plausibly deniable proxy or VPN so monitoring at the network egress for example doesn't trace directly back to your desktop IP address.

<comment><USER9> I don't see cache and history as too important, incognito mode will help with those. But there are other forms of monitoring - e.g. antivirus gets to look at all your browsing and potentially log it.

> shoehorn a plausibly deniable proxy or VPN

This I think is a bad idea, because it greatly increases the severity of getting caught. It serves as evidence that you knew what you were doing was not allowed and took steps to hide it. The whole idea of "taking steps to hide" activity at work is fundamentally doomed, because taking steps to frustrate the enforcement of a policy is itself against policy. Especially if you're in a legal environment with few employment rights.

<comment><USER11> _> This I think is a bad idea, because it greatly increases the severity of getting caught._

The threat assessment and risk mitigation is of course very context dependent. There is usually a trade-off between the risk of getting caught and the severity of consequences if caught.

One approach to getting a proxy officially "blessed" is to sell management on a proxy for the use of execs as an obscuring measure to "foil attempts at doing traffic analysis on their web use", should an intruder gain access to the network, which proxy then happens to be available for anyone "in the know" to use. This pitch may be particularly effective if one or more of the execs use Ashley Madison. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _There's the Navy official who faked his own death to end an affair._

He was an attack submarine captain.

The sheer lack of thought put into his plan alone warranted the dismissal, nevermind the actual ethics part of it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just remember that these are cautionary tales, not a tutorial!

<comment><USER13> That's funny, and appropriate. I recall Michael Lewis saying that he'd written 'Liar's Poker' as a cautionary tale, but that people were excited by the life described, and took it as an operating manual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the plain description of the action and violation.

Another US Government agency (FBI, maybe) has a similar document and the way it's written is unbearably smug. I think that got posted to HN sometime, but I have no idea when or what it's called.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was hoping for the chapter "He spied on his girlfriend using work means" or "He misread the constitution to the point that he issued a blanket warrant on all phone calls in the USA", but it seems like this guy hasn't been caught. Yet.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Since the stop was properly listed, the soldiers had not violated any > regulations, but they still received verbal counseling because their actions > created an appearance of impropriety

But huge donations to a senator's campaign is not? I hate this kind of top- down hypocrisy.

</comment><comment><USER16> How about carelessly bombing hundreds of innocent civilians with drones in countries you're not officially at war with, concocting dodgy evidence about WMDs to present to the UN security council, and basically destroying an entire country, while at the same time creating the power vacuum and conditions on the ground that allowed ISIS to gain power?

I thought some of that might at least warrant a mention.

<comment><USER17> What did that have to do with the military?

<comment><USER16> Um.... they were the ones who did all that stuff (except for the lying to the UN bit).

"Just following orders" isn't a great excuse.</comment></comment></comment>


Russia's improved ballistic missiles to be tested as asteroid killers - <AUTHOR> http://tass.ru/en/science/855968 <comment><USER2> Part of me gets that you can't "kill" an asteroid, and that a giant rock moving towards the earth would just be turned into many smaller rocks moving towards the earth... but that said, I think this sort of thing still might be useful, and I'd love someone to explain to me otherwise.

First, small rocks more easily burn up on their way down. So smashing a big rock to pieces increases the surface area enough that maybe that can make it safer for humans.

Secondly, perhaps the energy hitting the big rock would 'deflect' it ever so slightly. Fire it early enough, and you can make it completely miss the earth.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER3> You can use a nuke in multiple ways.

As a deflector (launched years or decades from impact), you can nudge the impactor out of its present orbit by gently ablating one side from a distance; You can do this iteratively until the impactor's orbit changes enough to miss Earth.

Decades is sufficient for some of the continuous-thrust alternatives, though, depending on scale.

As a point defence weapon (launched weeks or months from impact), you can send the nuke in as close as possible and detonate in order to break up the body. Yes, this would cause lots of smaller impactors, but over some size ranges it's preferable because ablation is insufficient. If 99% of the smaller impactors miss Earth, we win... in some cases.

Just breaking up a large impactor (at the very last minute, launched minutes or hours before impact) doesn't help so much if everything still hits Earth, because a planet-killer turns into hundreds of city-killers randomly spread out.

On the other hand, a small impactor could be dramatically affected by a nuke, with plausible amounts of vaporization going on. There's quite a lot of risk surface in small impactors, and they would be hard to spot until very close.

\---

Bong Wie is working through a NIAC grant on the problem:

[http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space-hazards/asteroid- hi...](http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space-hazards/asteroid-hitting- earth/innovative-hypervelocity-nuclear-interceptor-spacecraft-mitigating- impact-threat-asteroids/)

One interim observation: a nuke which detaches from a small cratering round which hits first, digging a hole for the nuke to fit in, would multiply its effectiveness severalfold.

It's a very different problem in each different size class of impactor (as well as orbital classes). 10m, 100m, 1000m, 10000m are all of concern in unique ways; each order of magnitude increase in diameter raises mass by three orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER4> > Just breaking it up (at the very last minute, launched minutes or hours > before impact) doesn't help so much if everything still hits Earth, because > a planet-killer turns into hundreds of city-killers randomly spread out.

Wouldn't smaller objects burn up a greater proportion of their mass in the atmosphere (due to the increase surface area) and kick up less of a dust cloud once they impact? Could hundreds of city-killers leave some areas unscathed and still populated and habitable?

I think it would be a great help if a planet-killer could be downgraded to a civilization-killer or even a species-killer.

<comment><USER5> Oooh, think of the lawsuits after that one...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's a great way to reintroduce nuclear tests discretely (well, sort of discretely). The cold war is back!

<comment><USER7> There is no indication in the article that a nuclear weapon will be used in the test.

I doubt that Russia or the US needs to really test nuclear weapons at this point, it is all about the delivery mechanism.

<comment><USER8> If you believe this you are pretty naive. The space program was initial started to support Starfish Prime type high altitude nuclear tests.

All launch vehicles until Apollo were ICBM's. The moon landing was originally planned to be a diplomatic stunt by JFK who wanted a peaceful mission to open a larger diplomatic dialog.

Space programs have always, and likely will always be a way to project power. And test high end military weapons under the guise of peace and science.

<comment><USER7> First of all it would be great if you didn't insult me to bring across your point.

The second thing I'd like to say: I never contradicted any facts you state here. Likely they will be using the data to improve their ICBM's, it would be an enormous waste of resources if they didn't. (and so does every other country that has ICBM's)

I said: nothing indicates that they will use a nuclear weapon, "it is all about the delivery mechanism" -> they will use ICBM's but without the warhead, which does not break any treaties to my knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is obviously just target practice for the military, right?

</comment><comment><USER10> What could possibly go wrong.

[https://www.baycitizen.org/news/japan- disaster/radioactive-r...](https://www.baycitizen.org/news/japan- disaster/radioactive-rain-falling-us/)

[http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/13/us/in-idaho-anger- over-195...](http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/13/us/in-idaho-anger- over-1950-s-nuclear-tests.html?pagewanted=all)

</comment><comment><USER11> Satellite killers.

<comment><USER12> If USSR would get capability to kill GPS satellites, U.S. nuclear subs could not target their missiles anymore. The rest of U.S. nuclear arsenal is in B2 bombers in known airfields and ICBM's in known silos. So by using their ICBM's to knock off airfields and silos, USSR could theoretically kill U.S. nuclear cabability withouht being hit.

This would mean that "pre-emptive" strike is suddenly lot sweeter deal for U.S. Alternatively restart midgetman program. Yay, more nukes. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM-134_Midgetman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM-134_Midgetman)

This would be "destabilizing" technology. I hope it goes nowhere.

<comment><USER13> I have a real hard time believing that US missile subs must have GPS to launch missiles.

It's obviously not as applicable to a ballistic launch, but here's an example of publicly known missile guidance that doesn't care about satellites:

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

I expect even without improvements like that they are prepared to launch and hope that the inertial navigation system in the missile is good enough.

<comment><USER12> GPS was created for U.S. nuclear subs. The problem is about knowing where the sub exactly surfaces, because after launch, the trajectory is ballistic. Subs have very good inertial navigation, but the accuracy deteriorates with time and movement.

TERCOM is very nice, but only applicable for cruise missiles flying close to ground and able to change their course.

<comment><USER13> Yes yes, the cruise missile thing was just pointing out that there are some quite advanced non satellite capabilities.

The more important point is the question of whether GPS is actually required for a launch or if it merely improves the process (accuracy, speed, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is potentially a powerful statement for Russia, though the article doesn't make it clear if the weapons are designed to break up the asteroid or redirect it. If the latter, it's extremely threatening: if you have the capability to deflect an asteroid to miss the earth, you can just as easily deflect one to hit.

</comment><comment><USER15> The article describes the asteroid Apophis as coming dangerously close but doesn't mention that it's not deemed a threat anymore. It's good PR for Russia's military power though if it could be done.

<comment><USER5> Thankfully, there's no possible way nuking an asteroid that's coming close but definitely already going to miss Earth could turn out badly. /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Asteroids aren't living things, they can't be killed.

Same applies for phones/tablets/watches, next time you want to write an article about a Samsung device.

<comment><USER17> metaphorical

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> obviously no one over there ever watched the movie: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon_(1998_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon_\(1998_film\))

</comment><comment><USER19> Russian millitary commander (rmc): Hey uhh... so we haven't used these things ever since we built them. Kinda a waste don't you think.

Russian scientist (rs): I guess. I mean against international law anyway so we couldn't use them even if we wanted to.

rmc: Can we come up with an excuse.

rs: I guess we could say they're good against asteroids.

rmc: Great, do it!</comment>


Ask HN: Why are hiring processes flawed and testing random standards? - <AUTHOR> I started looking at remote positions two months ago.  I've had the chance to be part of a number of different hiring processes.  I had a lot of take home projects, crazy math tests, some coding tests, interviews over various video platforms.  I've had rejections, rejections that turned into further interviews.
In the end I found what I was looking for.  It just seems the hiring processes overall is flawed in many ways.
Most were looking for exactly one type with one set of experiences.  Anything outside of that and you are filtered out.
Companies seem afraid to hire thinking there is a slightly better/cheaper option around the corner.
There is a fear to pull the trigger compared to local companies.  Afraid to take a chance on obvious candidates.  Someone with x amount of years in a language but not with a specific framework version.  It's like the ability to learn
even the smallest thing isn't considered.
Multiple unnecessary rounds of interviews/tests/assignments/group hiring.  The long the process ensures the best candidates go elsewhere or are filtered out.
The random unrelated tests.
The take home assignments with random marking standards.  Tests can matter, ui could matter, api structure could matter, documentation/choice of framework, speed, style all could matter but you rarely know which matters to whom and rarely have time to do it all and even if you did everything perfectly a lot of the time no one even looks or the reviewer expects the code to look like how they might write it.
Why are the processes so bad? <comment><USER4> In a nutshell: they aren't.

The economics of it are that in many places in the world, it is extremely difficult to fire an employee. Getting rid of an underperformer can take time, effort, and exposes the company to liability if the termination can be construed as relating to the employee being in a protected class (e.g. can't fire someone because she's a woman). Let's assume that it's a SF startup willing to play a little fast and loose and they aren't concerned with severance packages or the legal issues. They still put time and effort into training a new engineer. That's months of work that is potentially wasted.

All of that means that companies are incredibly risk-averse when it comes to hiring, and will pass on someone who looks even slightly wrong to them. It also means that the process is inherently random as a company will pass on someone they aren't sure of _even if they would have been a good hire_ just because they aren't certain. However, this also means that a lot of companies rely on self-selection in their hiring pool. Look for people they already know, from the same backgrounds, or are willing to pass through a series of arbitrary tests.

In short, it's like democracy. It's the worst form of government, except for all the others we've tried.

<comment><USER5> Don't know where you live but in most of Europe firing someone is pretty trivial.

For a newly hired, you have a probation period, before your contract becomes permanent, usually between a month and a year, where you can be fired on the spot. After that, your contract becomes permanent and you can get fired, no questions asked, with a notice period of usually between one and 3 months.

In theory, before letting you go, the company has to set up a performance improvement plan for you but companies never bother as it's considered wasted effort to invest in under performers so they just warn you at your performance review that your performance is lacking and that this is strike one. After 3 months of performance monitoring you are let go because your performance hasn't improved so that was strike two and you're out.

Sure, you can sue them if you know you've been wronged, and win a few thousand euros, but nobody's gonna hire you knowing you're in a lawsuit with your ex- employer so nobody bothers to sue and prefers to just find another job instead.

So unless you're a protected category, usually over 50 years old, woman or not, doesn't matter or part of some big-corp with strong unions, the hard-to- fire is not an argument that holds water here.

<comment><USER6> In the under-performing scenario, wouldn't the company have to pay part of the unemployment benefits (up to ~50% of the salary) for a year or so?

<comment><USER5> No, you and your employer pay monthly contributions to the social security system, as part of your income taxes, and in case you get laid off, your unemployment benefits come from that pool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I find funny is how little time and effort is put in writing the job description. The interview process is mostly very generic and the questions hardly in alignment to the role. As a profession we try hard to be correct about creating clear specs that can be translated to unambiguous steps for a machine to execute, but when it comes to hiring - we write ambiguous specs, toss it over to recruiters who are poorly equipped.

Here are some thoughts: \- When the new position opens, the team (say the scrum team) collaboratively writes a job description based on the current backlog. Let's not leave it to a manager or recruiter who is writing the job description. Use the company/team's mission and values as guidance to see who an ideal candidate would be. This is like writing your stories.

\- Then write the filtering criteria based on the typical day to day skills - what are must haves, what are good to have, what is ok to not have. This is like write your test cases.

\- What are the areas where the team is lacking. Try to get skills/qualities that will, for lack of a better expression, raise the bar of the team. This is like your retrospectives - and if you have notes from your recent retrospectives, they should help you identify what you are looking for.

\- This better spec should help the recruiters, and also give the candidates an honest look into the team.

\- For the interview, go back to your previous sprints etc. and build questions that are simplified models of what a typical story would look like. Instead of asking to invert a tree, may be it would be better to talk about how a particular problem you solved and see the approach the candidate would take. Give the candidate all the tools - their favorite editor/ide or whiteboard, whatever they prefer.

<comment><USER8> I'm actually assisting with a startup in building a solution for things like this, so your comment really struck home!

And as somebody with a past in technical recruiting, I really like your thinking. Indeed you're right: many recruiters are poorly equipped to actually understand the roles. We have non-coders as the first or second tier gatekeepers for development roles, which does not seem ideal.

Sometimes I'd get different signals from the job descriptions than the senior recruiters or hiring managers, which was frustrating. Other times, the requirements in descriptions were way too broad: like the team had an idea of what they wanted, but couldn't get it down on paper in a concise way.

Resumes can be a challenge, too: many engineers don't always give full details of their work. Perhaps because they're tired of getting recruiters reaching out for irrelevant roles (that happen to have a keyword match somewhere). Perhaps they don't have the time to always be updating and polishing.

A two-front solution could be really great. We need developers to write their best resumes, and we need employers to write their best job descriptions. Having them 'speak the same language' on concise accomplishments, metrics, technologies will make more automated matching a lot (a lot) easier.

And then, of course - build the interview process around the shared skills / technologies / etc.

Hopefully I'll have something to share here soon, or perhaps do an ask HN to chat more about making hiring developers easier for everyone

<comment><USER7> That is just great to hear.

"A two-front solution could be really great. We need developers to write their best resumes, and we need employers to write their best job descriptions. Having them 'speak the same language' on concise accomplishments, metrics, technologies will make more automated matching a lot (a lot) easier." \- 100%! This is the market place that Linkedin has been trying to create - but hasn't worked very well, right? They have largely solved the problem of structuring the resume data - which is definitely useful, but I don't see much of that on the job description side. The matching algorithms can only rise up to the level of quality of the input data - the resume data, and the job description.

There are similar problems in the dating industry, but mostly you can be sure both parties are putting their best efforts for creating better input.

I think honesty is also a critical part of the equation. And if the Linkedin or indeed could encourage both sides to reveal what they value deeply - <USER2> would things more useful. May be a few why questions rather than just checkboxes and drop downs that can be filled quickly. Candidate: Why is remote working important for you? Job poster: Why is a self-starter important for you? That would help bring out the uniqueness for the candidates and helped the matching algorithms.

Will look forward to seeing your product on Show HN - best wishes!

<comment><USER8> Thank you so much - and we can't wait to share!

For anyone who may be interested, [https://www.rocketship.jobs/](https://www.rocketship.jobs/)

If it can help even one person land a job, we'll be happy with having built something new and different!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have no answer to your question, but I can at least offer some sympathy and confirmation. I've been looking for a remote position for months and have been eliminated from consideration many times because I didn't have "X" months experience with specific technology "Y" \- which could be easily learned by _any_ experienced developer. It's baffling ... and deflating.

<comment><USER10> To defend some of this:

1) Why pay someone to learn? In both terms of money and other devs time being sunk into helping you learn.

2) If you do know "tool X" and its a primary tool then its a lot easier to quickly evaluate whether or not standards will align.

Personally I don't mind hiring Jr Developers that cost less, are mold-able, and are willing to put in extra effort. Could any experienced dev lean it? Sure... but its more costly and often ends up in a "I have now studied X for Y weeks, we do X wrong I refuse to do X your way."

<comment><USER11> Do you work with such an extremely static stack that it requires no further learning?

I would say that one of the most important qualities a developer can have is the ability to learn.

Perhaps, you expect all the learning to be done outside of work?

<comment><USER10> I lead product and engineering orgs in startups, so yes I make sure our -core- tools remain static as possible.

I never claimed learning is not important, if anything I supported that in my comment in hiring eager jr's.

My point being is if I am hiring someone "experienced" I need someone who can mentor others, own projects, and help drive our current products forward. If that person will need to come in and learn the job... I might as well hire a JR and train them up instead or hold our the X months the "experienced" person will need to learn to bypass that whole ordeal.

<comment><USER12> I hear you. There are so many kinds of senior developers. Wrote a blog post about it:

[http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2812](http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2812)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I asked an HR rep about this and she told me there is a massive influx of new grads demanding very high salaries. You and I might be from a generation where a CS degree was not an obvious choice and the supply was not as high for organizations. Unfortunately years of experience don't count for much in this industry, especially with how fast technologies change.

<comment><USER13> Also, startup hiring usually means joining an already close knit team. If you have to interview with 5 people, have a fifty-fifty chance with each and anyone can veto your hire that gives you a 3% chance of getting an offer. Competency will get your foot in the door, but ultimately it comes down to the social psychology of social comparison and propinquity.

If you are a senior/staff with some success at previous startups, you are likely to get vetoed by developers who see you as a threat in the promotions tournament.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The process is aimed at fulfilling a business need that they are experiencing. Unless you know everything going on internally, it is difficult to judge whether the hiring process is bad, or simply not matched to your expectations. As to why it seems fearful, there is a huge price to pay if you make a bad hire in any company, but it is exaggerated when you make a bad remote hire, even more so if they have never worked remote before, and you need to bring them up to speed on how it works. There may be fear, but again, it is business-driven.

<comment><USER15> Your comment is chock full of flawed and patently false ideas. Firstly, I have yet to encounter a company with a hiring process that is actually, provably, repeatedly tied to any of that company's business needs. Designing a working hiring process is harder than the software work that the hiring is for. It's no surprise that results usually seem arbitrary and ineffective.

Secondly, and following up on my first critique, an ineffective hiring process usually leads to the hiring of candidates who are good at interviewing, not at the actual work. These are the literal "bad hires" that should have been sifted out by the hiring process.

<comment><USER16> > Your comment is chock full of flawed and patently false ideas.

Whoa, what triggered and justified that response? I don't know if the parent was edited, but it seems pretty reasonable to me.

> Firstly, I have yet to encounter a company with a hiring process that is > actually, provably, repeatedly tied to any of that company's business needs.

What do you mean? Why do companies hire then?

> an ineffective hiring process usually leads to the hiring of candidates who > are good at interviewing, not at the actual work. These are the literal "bad > hires"

This hasn't been true in my experience. Why would someone who's good at the work not tend to be good at interviews?

I've interviewed hundreds of people and hired dozens. The number one reason for a candidate not getting a position is that there was another better candidate. More often than not, it has nothing to do with how good the candidate is, nor does it have anything to do with how good the company's interview process is. After that, there is usually a large number of candidates that are young and shooting above their weight, hoping to get in somewhere with almost enough qualification. Occasionally, that works. I haven't bumped into anyone yet that was great at interviewing but not good at the work, but like many companies, I'm using the interviews to try and find out if they'll fit it, and if they're truly interested, and if they're good at work.

<comment><USER17> >> > Firstly, I have yet to encounter a company with a hiring process that is actually, provably, repeatedly tied to any of that company's business needs.

>> What do you mean? Why do companies hire then?

Sadly this is _very common_ \-- the bigger and more profitable the company the more common it is. Companies often hire for non-business related reasons for several major reasons:

1\. Bench strength -- Hire top talent before you need it so you are ready to fire when you have a strategic project. Ideally, hire away talent your competitors might hire. In many ways, this is a good thing.

2\. "Burn the Budget" \- Divisions will often lose budget if they dont spend it, and they may lose it in future years when they need it ("well you got it last year and you didnt use it, so this year you dont get it...") -- so many divisions will hire to burn the budget and use it just so they dont lose budget when they really really need it.

3\. HR - It is common for HR to institute Crazy-8s policies or some variant of it -- where you only get promoted if you have 8 (or _N_ ) people working for you. Naturally all sorts of non business related tasks suddenly pop up and people hire just enough to get promoted. This is very common in organizations where promotion and pay is linked to non business metrics (how much budget you control, how many people report to you) rather than business metrics (revenue delivered, revenue enabled, churn reduced, traffic increased, etc.) Often your boss themselves wants to be promoted and needs 8 middle-managers 8 under them to get promoted. And so on up the chain. Almost half the HR departments in my ~20yr career institute such a policy, whether it is internally known or not. It is of course more common in organizations which are not metrics driven.

<comment><USER16> Aren't those all "business needs" in a general sense?

<comment><USER17> #1 is a business need.

#2 is a gray area.

#3 is business burn -- when an organization "needs" to hire loads of people to work on useless projects just to align to rigid HR rules, the business has stopped to drive operations and instead operations are driving the business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Two thoughts.

First, most companies will look for a remote person only after exhausting their local labor pool. If someone remote has to devote their initial months to learning with no advantage over someone local learning the same content, why not go with the added benefit of hiring someone local.

Second, many companies have a fallback person in place who can almost meet the need - maybe they have x amount of years in a language, right attitude, etc. This process is only to see if you are better than their fallback option. The distressing answer sounds to be rarely.

</comment><comment><USER19> A few (incomplete) thoughts:

1\. We haven't yet figured out a way to get enough signal from two hours or so of work.

2\. There are multiple ways to be a good programmer, but companies need a standardized way to assess skill. There's an inherent mismatch.

3\. Most teams don't even know how to gauge their own employees' skill/value.

4\. Teams rarely have their own employees retake their hiring tests to calibrate effectively.

5\. Unpopular opinion: they aren't. Skills like algorithms are vital, and people who argue that they don't matter simply don't want to do the work.

<comment><USER20> > 4\. Teams rarely have their own employees retake their hiring tests to > calibrate effectively

I can't imagine that would end well in most cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hiring is an inherently hard problem. I imagine the additional hard to test requirements of remote work (autonomy, discipline, ability to do your own it, ...) doesn't make it easier.

</comment><comment><USER22> I have come to see trying to find a job is a lot like dating. You see the company for the first time "oh look how pretty. We would be perfect together!"

Then you start talking and they ask you a bunch of really stupid questions. The voice in your head starts telling you something is off.

Then they start testing you and giving you the run around. In dating this is known as playing games.

Just like in dating it's time to wake up and realize they are showing you who they truly are. Ignore at your own peril!

</comment><comment><USER23> I am building a product/startup [1] to address some of the problems you mention, and as a result, I've been talking to hiring teams at several companies, so I can give you some reasons why the processes are bad.

* Hiring is a marketplace, and supply/demand is not always balanced, so most issues related to job search/hiring is due to this.

* When a company posts an ad for a job, they usually receive about 150-200 applicants within 2 weeks, thanks to job boards, LinkedIn etc. Unless it is for specific high-skilled jobs, in which case, they receive hardly any applicants at all.

* Most of the applicants are usually not a match for the job, but given the number of applicants, recruiters rely on resumes, social profiles etc to shortlist about 20 applicants.

* Tests and assignments are quick means to filter, hence their popularity.

* Not much of an incentive to keep applicants posted at every step, plus, managing communication with a few hundred applicants for multiple positions is hard - so you're most likely to receive only automated communication from the hiring team.

I believe that having a clear specification of the job, that can be checked/validated with applicants is critical to ensuring a smooth, fast interviewing process.

[1] - Shameless plug to my startup (in beta) - [https://www.interviewpass.co](https://www.interviewpass.co). If any of you are interested in using InterviewPass in your hiring, drop me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com - happy to help set it up for you.

<comment><USER24> The problem as I see it is that good applicants don't bother with job boards. When you have recruiters banging on your door and begging to handle all the details for you (and provide proper communication) it's no wonder candidates don't bother applying. That, however, means the expectation is that job board candidates are bad and desperate. So companies will filter them more aggressively than recruiter candidates. So candidates now have even more incentive to go with recruiters since it actually gives them a better chance to get hired.

<comment><USER23> That's true. Recruiters provide the initial screening, which is lacking in a job board.

But the hiring process is broken beyond the initial screening as well, biggest reason being lack of incentives for the involved parties to close a position quickly.

<comment><USER24> >That's true. Recruiters provide the initial screening, which is lacking in a job board.

It's not just the initial screening. They actively go out and find candidates who otherwise wouldn't be looking for jobs directly. And as I said before, those tend to be prime candidates since they get so many recruiters they have little need to apply directly.

>But the hiring process is broken beyond the initial screening as well, biggest reason being lack of incentives for the involved parties to close a position quickly.

Again, recruiters are a solution to this because their paycheck is based on closing the deal. They will hound the company and the candidate to get the process finalized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> All of my previous job searches started with me seeking remote work and ended with me giving up and taking a local job. There clearly is a surplus of great engineers looking for remote gigs.

I've recently landed an on-site job (I had to relocate) that pays pretty well in an R&D type environment that's actually all right -- in fact, this is one of the few jobs I've had that I've not hated -- so I may stay here more than my usual 1-2 years :)

<comment><USER8> I really hope there's a big push for remote roles. If that's where the talent wants to be, companies should be able to stay competitive.

Plus, it's much better for the environment. If you can do you work from home, why not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _Most were looking for exactly one type with one set of experiences. Anything outside of that and you are filtered out._

In my experience this rings true for senior roles and less so for new college grads.

 _Companies seem afraid to hire thinking there is a slightly better /cheaper option around the corner._

I can see why perhaps a candidate receiving a rejection may think this, but in the companies I've worked at this has never been the case. It's always been "it's really tough finding talent, not paying talent".

 _The take home assignments with random marking standards. Tests can matter, ui could matter, api structure could matter, documentation /choice of framework, speed, style all could matter but you rarely know which matters to whom and rarely have time to do it all and even if you did everything perfectly a lot of the time no one even looks or the reviewer expects the code to look like how they might write it._

A fair reviewer recognizes the limitations of these take home exercises. While there are many ways to perform a take-home successfully, there are more ways to show that you aren't qualified for the role. Not all that pass will be right for the job, but most who fail aren't.

<comment><USER27> > _Most were looking for exactly one type with one set of experiences. > Anything outside of that and you are filtered out._

> In my experience this rings true for senior roles and less so for new > college grads.

I agree that I've seen this to be true for senior roles, but what I've noticed on many job descriptions is the reluctance to say they are looking for a senior engineer. I've gone through quite a few phone screens where it becomes immediately apparent that the company is looking _only_ for a senior but the job title and sometimes description looks like it was written for a mid or even junior position. So I can completely understand where OP's view of the hiring process comes from - you go through the initial test round, get to speak to them, then find out that they have extremely specific requirements. If you happen to be unlucky enough to go through many of these, it can really mess with your perspective on the hiring process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> They only get as picky as their options. Remote companies get exponentially more candidates so they can make them jump like monkeys with impunity.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1WiCGq- PcY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1WiCGq-PcY)

</comment><comment><USER29> My opinion - Why is the process so bad? Hiring technical talent is flat out difficult. Even for the best companies. Thus, attempt after attempt has been made to figure out "the right way" to screen candidates to prevent bad hires.

It started with algorithmic interviews. Then, we tried take home assignments. Now, lots of companies are doing pair programming type scenarios including a code review for a more accurate representation of a day on the job. Still, there hasn't been this silver bullet companies are looking for to solve their hiring woes.

I don't know the solve. There's also a large problem with those doing the interviewing being either untrained or unempathetic to the candidates.

</comment><comment><USER30> Hiring processes are terrible for lack of accountability, transparency, feedback.

I ran for political office. Endorsement interviews can be either awesome or brutal. One key difference is whether the interview is recorded, and then shared publicly.

It will surprise no one that my worst interviews (in both politics and tech) were behind closed doors.

Worst of all are the 1:1 interviews with inexperienced interviewers. Zero accountability, zero transparency, no feedback loops. They just report whatever they want, are not even expected to explain themselves.

I've since decided that any future job interviews will be recorded and posted. I will definitely embarrass myself. But until someone starts, no improvement can occur.

</comment><comment><USER6> At least I can weed out companies with bad hiring practices. They team can't be much better than how they hire.

Having a remote interview with really bad audio, no word on their product, no small talk, just questions without discourse or feedback on my answers? - <USER3> thanks.

I'm a bit torn on assignments and trial days. I think they should simply be paid.

<comment><USER12> At the company for which I work, we definitely pay something for the take home assignment. Not a ton. It's less a "this is what you'd get paid as a contractor" and more "this is a recognition that you are spending some free time on this and we appreciate it".

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hiring process in our industry has lots of problems and discussing them is one of HN's favourite topics. For remote the bar is higher, simply because not everybody is able to be effective working remotely, so companies are more weary about remote workers.

For ex my company does hire remote but only senior and more exceptional candidates.

</comment><comment><USER32> People giving remote-specific response as if that is the only problem. It is probably a contributor as well but frankly I have had very similar experiences interviewing for non-remote jobs.

</comment><comment><USER33> Unpopular answer: Interviewer Ego

</comment><comment><USER34> Let's first establish: how are you measuring hiring success?

</comment><comment><USER35> My company is 100% remote so I have quite a bit of experience with being on the recruitment side.

I think if there was a standard for recruiting that the industry followed, then people would just be thinking of ways to "hack" the standard, so I don't think that would be helpful.

Remote working is desirable and rare but also a lot of companies that recruit for remote workers are very new ones and they often have no clue what they're doing. I think they feel that so long as they make it really hard and unpleasant, they'll be like the other massive internet companies.

To be honest, I also have no real clue what I'm doing but I am trying. Perhaps you could give me some feedback on our process while we're here:

1\. A written test where we ask a few questions around the candidate's experience - what's the most interesting thing they've worked on, what recent tech are they most interested in, and we ask them to do a code review of a poorly written method. We have a strong culture of documentation so if the candidate can't write well then it's not going to be a good fit.

2\. An online interview where we talk about the company, discuss the test, answer questions and write some code together via screen sharing. This latter part takes the longest part - firstly we write a simple string reverse method, write some unit tests for it, debug another method and design a history API for a browser (which has more edge cases than you'd think). What we're looking for: confidence in programming, code, design and communication.

3\. An online or in-person (depending on where the candidate lives) interview with me and our CEO. This part has about a 95% success rate for the candidate, our CEO's just a people person and likes to get to know people.

4\. The candidate is hired, and we start assigning work in increasing levels of difficulty. This is a probation period of 3 months.

Stage 4 is still part of the interview, we're able to take advantage of UK labour laws that allow us to let someone go inside 2 years without having too much trouble.

This way we can see them working for real and even if they aren't that good, get some sort of benefit from it. Of course, we might waste some money but it's an opportunity to learn what we need to do better during the interview phase.

For better or worse, capitalism rewards those who take risks. I think the companies with their multi-month long recruitment cycles are putting too much effort into risk minimisation. I'm happy when I hear about my competitors' "brutal" interview processes. It means they're moving slower than me.

<comment><AUTHOR> As long as there are clear expectations at each step I think that goes a long way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> why would you choose to work remote - are you retired? no jobs available in your immediate area?

<comment><USER37> Why do you ask that?

I work partial remote and every day I go to the office I wish I was fully remote... not because I hate the office (I love it, and really enjoy my co- workers) but because I hate commuting.

<comment><USER36> Partial remote or designated telework days make more sense than being fully remote.

However, it seems like you're exchanging any future/potential at a company for the convenience of working remote which why i was asking if he was retired.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the next billion dollar acquisition? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Something combining the physical and digital worlds (e.g. AirBnB, although not claiming it will be them).

Software for software's sake is getting more played out every day and it seems there's such enormous potential to make everyday life vastly better using modern websites and mobile apps.</comment>


Person Finder: Boston Marathon Explosions - <AUTHOR> http://google.org/personfinder/2013-boston-explosions

<comment><USER2> The Red Cross already does this. It's called Safe And Well. This is one place where we definitely don't need fragmentation.

If you need to check on someone in Boston, I recommend Safe And Well. Just please don't go to the site unless you actually need to check on someone. The servers don't need the added load (which I guess would be a reason to want to use Google, but they aren't going to be on scene like the Red Cross will be).

<comment><AUTHOR> The Red Cross link: [http://www.redcross.org/find-help/contact- family/register-sa...](http://www.redcross.org/find-help/contact- family/register-safe-listing)

> _Due to high volume, Safe and Well is experiencing slow page loads at this > time. Please continue to check back._

Edit: Also, I hate to bag on anything disaster-relief related, but it's not very useful even when it is working, as it returns results from what looks like the Red Cross's entire database of these records, rather than those scoped to today.

<comment><USER3> This might be a place where the Red Cross might be able to improve their services by creating an AppEngine or EC2 instance to handle the traffic?

<comment><USER4> Or let Google do it. Google can scale _much_ faster than the Red Cross can outsource it.

<comment><USER5> Until Google decides to close it a few years from now in order to focus on what matters.

<comment><USER6> There is no need to run a person finder for longer than the duration of the disaster.

<comment><USER7> We've had wars that run for decades, a timespan in which it's definitely possible for a company to lose interest (or even cease to operate altogether). Thankfully this doesn't seem to be an issue as long as the company running it uses the open data format as pointed out by magicalist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is helpful, I passed the link to a friend whose cousin ran in the race.

And the whining in this thread is deplorable.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm impressed by the speed of software engineering at Google, do they pre- design these systems for such events ?

that was pretty quick indeed.

<comment><USER10> This has existed before today. Check out the home page: <http://google.org/personfinder/global/home.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Status: Someone has received information that this person is alive" \- I wish they reword it to something less scary. like, "Status: Someone has received information that this person is fine"

<comment><USER12> the two do not mean the same thing though. the former means the person is not dead, while your version means the person is not harmed. in google's version, the person might have lost a limb or was injured, but still alive. this is not "fine". it's better to be clear about what the information that the message carries in this situation IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thank you for posting this, danso.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what the ramifications are for this functionality with regard to people that are in the Witness Protection Program. I suppose that might just be another thing our civil servants will be considering when they're protecting their witnesses.

<comment><USER14> Batshit insane.

What kind of implications could this tool possibly have for witness protection? It returns data that was explicitly entered in connection with a specific disaster, and you can only search by name. Someone who's in hiding isn't going to give out their original identity, so how exactly do you propose to use this to track them?

Did you even click through to see what this thing really does, or did you actually just assume that "Person Finder" must be some kind of magical privacy-violating anal probe and rush to type out the first paranoid, nonsensical and idiotic thing to run through your head and click post as a knee-jerk reaction?

<comment><USER3> Wooow. I was just curious. I wasn't intending to throw FUD around or anything of the sort. I didn't think it was privacy violating. I think it's great, in fact. Calm down :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yet another Google service soon to be discontinued... When one need it as most probably.

<comment><USER16> Is this really the time or the place for your comment?</comment></comment>


Russians confirm UK climate scientists manipulated data - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020126/climategate-goes-serial-now-the-russians-confirm-that-uk-climate-scientists-manipulated-data-to-exaggerate-global-warming/

<comment><USER2> News from Russia. When it rains it snows.

</comment><comment><USER3> No discussion on this? Ah well.

Does anyone know if the Russian temperature data is freely available though?</comment>


Whatever happened to chatbots? - <AUTHOR> 2016 was the "year of the chatbot". Three years later, how are chatbots doing? <comment><USER2> This article does a good job explaining why they were overhyped: [https://blog.growthbot.org/chatbots-were-the-next-big- thing-...](https://blog.growthbot.org/chatbots-were-the-next-big-thing-what- happened)

Basically, people were too occupied with the fancy technology, and forgot about actually solving problems. People want to get things done, and clicking and choosing options in a GUI is already an very efficient way of doing so.

When they want to do more complex things, we don't want to talk to a chatbot, only to eventually get an useless response like "Sorry, we can't do that request online. Please call us" (if I wanted to call someone, I wouldn't be using you!)

<comment><USER3> I have a fair amount of experience in a related field, which is messaging- based service and came to the article is spot-on. Some companies simply wanted to map their phone support flows to messaging (yuck!) and others wanted to do more pre-chat type of activities, such as getting basic information from the customer. For these latter use cases, some level of "AI" was useful to let a customer communicate with more natural language rather than having to enter a specific number or keyword, but you still essentially ended up with an analogue of a phone system.

In my case, a goal was better agent efficiency (i.e. fewer agents handle more customers) AND happier customers. A sweet spot for these chatbots was for them to handle specific interactions but not the whole conversation. For example, handling some basic pre-chat information gathering, or in the case of an interaction around rebooking a hotel stay, handling the date and room selection when using a medium that supports rich messaging, such as FB Messenger or iMessage.

Until we have fully conversational chatbots, it's going to be really hard to have a solution that a) eliminates agents from the equation AND b) results in higher customer satisfaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well hello there Animats, how are you today? What can I help you with?

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, there are tons of chatbot popups when I visit websites.

</comment><comment><USER6> They got btfo pretty hard by sites like this [https://chatbot.fail](https://chatbot.fail) and others. But they're still around, easy to sell this concept to low IQ types.

<comment><AUTHOR> Um. Yes. I've been visiting various sites selling chatbots. None of them use a chatbot to sell their own services. Only one, IBM, even had a demo chatbot, and despite using "Watson", it was dumber than some phone trees.

On the other hand, Alexa seems to be far better than most chatbots.</comment></comment>


Schema.org  - Improve your website's sharability and spreadability - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-digital/web-strategy/improve-your-websites-sharability-and-spreadability/article4255653/

<comment><AUTHOR> someone concisely help me refute this drivel.</comment>


German Spiegel on Google Goggles' Face Recognition and More - <AUTHOR> http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2010-01-10-n86.html <comment><USER2> Looks like Germans are sensitive to privacy (for historical reasons perhaps). USA culturally less sensitive, so I think we may expect more Konzerns about privacy and aggregation of data about German citizens in American online companies.</comment>