MorePowerToYou

I think the optimal solution to the hiring problem requires trying out the actual relationship. It's similar to dating. Predicting the long-term success of a relationship based on a first date is sub-optimal.

A service that provides this "trial relationship" could work. When I'm looking for a new job, I could do one hour per day of real work for a few companies. After five days, both employer and prospective employee will have a better understanding of each other than a single day of interviews allows.

There's practical concerns. Companies certainly wouldn't give prospective employees full access to internal codebases or data. Companies would have to break off small tasks which could devolve into throw-away take-home assignments. Employees at the company would have to endure the annoyance of dealing with prospective hires. It might be worth it for everyone.

What's the best way to have the OnStar, Car-net, etc hardware removed from the vehicle? I don't want my car connected to the fucking internet. I'm tempted to just pry out the hardware myself, but am curious if the dealer or mechanics will do it for you.

The point is Snap knows how to make things people want. Contrast with GearVRs or Oculus Rifts. They're not selling for above retail on eBay.

Serious question: are the growth numbers scrutinized? How exactly are they calculated? It seems like down-playing growth numbers pre-IPO could leave more room for "awesome growth" in the first few post-IPO years. Maybe switch the way the numbers are calculated at the appropriate times.

None of those companies are start-ups. Companies that are truly start-ups have little to zero revenue and little to zero name recognition. The companies you mentioned have passed the start-up phase but have yet to reach the Goliath phase (Amazon, Google, etc). They all have/had escape velocity and are/were on the upwards trajectory.

Another fun one: I Don't IOT

I found the initial experience very compelling, too. Unfortunately, that initial thrill wears off fast. I challenge you to buy a Vive and report back in a few months with your daily usage level.

The current VR/AR situation is nowhere near the iTunes app store situation when it was taking off in 2008-2010. The most notable difference is visible adoption of the technology. By 2009, non-tech peers and relatives were spending more time consuming content on their iPhones and iPod Touches than I was as a developer. You'd see more smartphones everyday just walking around.

I work in San Francisco in an office with multiple tech companies. VR/AR is about 99.9% invisible. It's occasionally mentioned by developers/gamers upon returning from GDC. Otherwise, it's completely off peoples' radars. I think the technology has potential, but claiming it's "the next iPhone" is inaccurate. It remains to be seen.

Indeed, I think AR glasses will replace at least the display portion of smartphones. If I had to guess, the progression would go something like this: Initially, it will be glasses connected to the smartphone. Then, glasses connected to a watch-like device. Finally, just the glasses.

I touched on this before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12104656. Imagine waiting in an airport and browsing instagram or watching videos on a relatively large, private display via glasses. The tiny, visible-by-others smartphone display would look very primitive in comparison.

If the actual work is going well, you can try working under someone else, in a different department, etc. Of course, no one should be treated like this in the workplace. However, it happens because the workplace can really suck.

"VR is the next platform, it's just not ready yet."

I think the organization as a whole is just indifferent. Does this breach really matter to Yahoo's bottom line? They were already sold to Verizon. Most of the active users probably won't read this news. It's sad to say, but I think Yahoo as a whole just doesn't care about their users.

Agree 100%. This back and forth between fully-autonomous and partially-autonomous highlights the largest obstacles for "self-driving" car adoption.

The fully-autonomous route runs head-first into the inevitable, messy problems with software: security, maintenance, feature creep, complexity, unreliable networks etc. In theory, humans could nail all of these in car software. In practice, it's highly unlikely. The software industry can't even get basic security for IoT devices right.

The human-in-the-loop route runs directly into the only problem more daunting than reliable software: human nature. Human overrides for self-driving cars that need to be activated in a timely manner will not work. The drivers won't be paying enough attention to react in sufficient time. Note that overrides add even more complexity to an already fantastically complex system.

I wanted to like VR. I made a few apps, shipped a game, tried the Rift, Vive, and PSVR. My initial enthusiasm spread to friends and family. Peers purchased GearVRs and ordered cardboard. Fast forward a few years and every single one of those headsets is gathering dust. Once enthusiastic friends won't take my VR hardware for free.

I guess my primary gripe is that it's just not comfortable relative to any other form of entertainment. It's worse than reading on a phone or tablet. It's worse than playing games on a phone, console, or PC. It's worse than watching movies in the theatre. Sure, those are high bars and VR is still kinda young. But all the hype is quickly being exposed as bullshit. VR isn't catching on. Catching on looks like the iPhone in 2008-2009 or the web in the late nineties.

+1 Forget about trucks. What about trains? That's an even easier problem to solve than trucks.

Bringing human decision making into the loop makes things messier. If any of these human decisions need to be made quickly in the interest of safety, then the driver needs to be paying attention at all times. That won't happen. This is very dangerous. This is also complex in terms of liability. If the car hits something while driving partially autonomously, where does the responsibilty lie? The software, the driver, or somewhere else? We're far from the widespread use of autonomous cars. I'm not even going to mention the dangers of buggy software written by large companies that can't get iCloud notes syncing to work.

I question how much peace-of-mind self-driving cars bring to the intersection situation. While the inattentive human drivers are annoying, they're also predictable. As a pedestrian, I just wait for the driver to look up and go (or stop) before I proceed. The behavior of self-driving cars is, in my opinion, much harder to predict. Who knows when the buggy control software will cause the car to slam on the gas? Of course the software will be carefully written and tested. However, anyone who writes software for a living knows that carefully written and tested code often goes against economic incentives like "release fast" and "add more features to sell more".

Don't forget about uBeam! https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/16/05/14/1548248/former-em...

The news is fake, but the money is real!

+1 "construct increasingly convoluted notions..." to rationalize or support anything is a huge red flag in this case and, imo, life in general. Understanding the tax system requires trudging through increasingly obscure rules? It's probably a broken, inefficient system. Health care billing system rules are convoluted, vague, and complex? Yeah, it's probably pretty broken. Need a convoluted, complex explanation to rationalize your support for Peter Thiel despite his endorsement of certain political figures? Again, a huge red flag.

+1 can't wait to get my friends and family back from their social media and infotainment addictions. The internet has so much potential to help human society.

ELI5: you discuss the solution with the person, too. If they can't accurately describe it, they fail. They either have poor communication skills, don't understand what they wrote, or didn't write what they submitted. Those are all easy fails.

This method is great. It's worked for me when seeking new jobs.

Regarding the "algorithms trivia via whiteboard" style interviews: I think this type of interview is, unfortunately, the best large companies can do given their constraints. These constraints include hiring lots of new graduates, interviewing pipelines that include technically illiterate recruiters and engineers who lack the executive function to accurately assess candidates' viability. Lastly, the people involved in hiring at large companies are clueless about what the new hire will actually work on. It seems so obvious that tailoring the interviewing process to the actual fucking work that the person will be doing is a good approach. Once again, the contraints in a large company prevent this from happening in general.

+1 and were playing games with peoples' health in an arguably more egregious manner than even soylent.

Companies that mess up always fix things the first time. Just like Samsung fixed the Note 7 first try. It's not like replacement Note 7s were catching on fire on airplanes or anything... oh wait /s

This works in theory, but not in the real, messy world we live in.

I understand the separation between business/investment realtionships and political affiliation. Most politicians actions are relatively benign. Hence, overlooking the political affiliation of investors with said politicians is easy. However, there's a point when a politician is advocating for something so egregious that supporting said politician can no longer be ignored.

Currently, Trump is "just" advocating for racism, sexism, etc. Apparently that's sufficiently benign to ignore the investors affiliations when their investment is large enough (at least for YC).

But what if Trump was advocating for something more egregious? Like, say, allowing domestic police to torture suspects. There's always a line. For some, Trump's actions have crossed that line. For others, it hasn't happened yet.

Talk to a professional. Don't take those stupid interview puzzles too seriously. Interview with other, smaller companies after taking a break. I did the above three things and couldn't be happier with my current job. Be patient with yourself.

The whole "dedication to free speech" mantra is cute, but ultimately just reeks of a failed bet on how to run the company.

From a technical perspective, letting essentially anyone say anything is easier to handle. The engineering resources that would otherwise go towards advanced content filtering and detection, etc can now just focus on making the platform scale. That works out well when a company is growing like crazy in the early days.

From a business perspective, the hate-spewing users are "really engaged with the product." Having a lot of users in this category is a great thing to tell investors. Also, the growth from these users is something investors like, too. So it's also a win from a business perspective.

I'm guessing that Twitter's leadership made a decision early on. Something along the lines of "let's go with the free speech thing for now. It lends itself to efficient allocation of engineering resources and improving key metrics." When you're growing as fast as Twitter in the early days, it's not necessarily a bad choice. However, the current growth stagnation and other negative issues surrounding the company is really starting to expose the downsides of that haphazard decision.

Airbnb could prominently feature an "unverified" notice on the site if they wanted to. They don't because, for every case like this, there are probably hundreds of unverified renters who work out just fine.

While featuring an unverified notice (and doing other background check stuff) would make the interaction between owner and renter safer, it would probably eliminate a non-trivial percentage of those "unverified but it worked" cases. And that means less profit/growth for Airbnb.