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com··on Ask HN: Cheapest / most efficient way of pre-filtering candidates
Hiring from your own and employee's network.

Provide significant referral bonuses to employees and ex-employees if a new hire stays on board for more than 6 months with above-average performance reviews.

Run evaluations with external recruitment firms - do quality shoot-outs with three recruitment firms for the same open role - each may present only three CVs. Never run any position with less than two external recruitment firms and let them clearly know that you're tracking quality metrics (CV fit, interview quality of candidates, job role fit, and six month retention and above-average performance review) and will retire your partnership if they drop below mean.

Run an empanelling process for the recruiters for each role and learn how to do it properly and repeatedly. This is a simpler process than the one you run internally with the hiring exec (you?), hiring manager and interviewer pool. You have an empanelling process, right?

com··on The Quiet Unraveling of the Power Grid Monopoly
Traditionally, network effects have allowed us to socialize costs (and socialize benefits) in power, water, gas, roads and communications. We've used very different models in different places for each of these "natural monopolies" that get constructed.

When consumers opt out en masse, these systems collapse if they're not actually socialized - and where there is no actual financial benefit to consumers for going "off-grid" since they're still paying with taxes or equivalent.

I'd love to see an analysis of the different approaches in the different phases, possibly including TV-for-public benefit, like the BBC or NPR too.

com··on Shame Surrounding Spreadsheets
I'm always amazed by how well some people manage EVERYTHING in spreadsheets. For me, it never works out - either too complicated to use properly, or not complicated enough to address my problems.
com··on Can I start using Wayland in 2026?
I might be in the wrong Wayland desktop environment; I couldn’t get it to work reliably. Headless Wayland was really complicated when I last tried it, and quite memory heavy.

I’ll try again this month!

com··on Can I start using Wayland in 2026?
I don’t use x2x but use xev and xdotool for automated regression testing of GUI tools.

I can’t find a low-effort, high-portability, low-menory way to do it with Wayland.

Local and also in CI pipelines.

com··on Finland detains ship and its crew after critical undersea cable damaged
The same wealth disparity does not exist in the west. Travel 100km out of Moscow and compare how people live to the same distance from Paris. Then go to the Russian Far East. It’s overtly that not been seen in the west since the 1950s and WWII reconstruction.
com··on Ukraine Is Winning the War at Sea
Anybody who wants to destroy the Chinese or western economies will be watching this carefully, it’s safe to assume.
com··on Most technical problems are people problems
And people problems are almost invariably managent failures
com··on Why is there so little GenAI content if I use the small web filter?
The difference seems really stark. HN’s front page seems to be 15-20% GenAI related content, but the small web version at 5% or so.

Is it an artifact of Kagi’s small web list generation, or are many stories being pushed by the “big web”?

com··on You want microservices, but do you need them?
Well the canonical example is WhatsApp, but there are loads of other success stories if you care to look.

Small teams, big results is a characteristic that I’m very interested in, in our post-ZIRP reality.

com··on Show HN: Forty.News – Daily news, but on a 40-year delay
I opened this, only to be confronted by an article about the investigation into the downing of Air India flight 182, a terrorist attack that killed hundreds of people, including my childhood neighbour friends Brinda and Arti and their dad, Vishnu.

Forty years. What lives they could have led, people they would have loved and been loved by. For their family, so many years of grief.

Thank you for this project.

com··on Violation of Bell inequality with unentangled photons
If it’s true, do we get cheaper quantum dots and better atomic clocks?
com··on The problems that accountability can't fix
Get the downside risk people in tech to report to somebody who is accountable for managing downside risk at the same level of the CTO.

Typically an intelligent and tech literate CFO or Chief Risk Officer.

If the Head of Security and the CTO can’t come to a deal, it reaches the ExCo or board for a decision.

I call this “creative tension” and it works better than the alternative.

com··on The problems that accountability can't fix
The Double Bind surfaces in tech/security hierarchies where the CTO manages the Head of Security, and is officially accountable for delivering on growth opportunities as well as managing security risks.

While there are great CTOs out there that are conscientious and thoughtful about this double-bind, most aren’t.

It’s good to have open discussions about upside opportunity versus downside risk and generally that happens best when your boss’ bonus doesn’t primarily depend on them maximising upside.

com··on The Architecture of Genocidal Starvation
This is a terrifying report and if there is any justice in this world, the perpetrators of this crime against humanity will be persued and prosecuted by international tribunals.

With reports like these, there is no excuse that “we didn’t know”.

com··on How to Build a Medieval Castle
They won't be able to read the records due to physical bit rot of any public archives making it through the narrow path to the future, and of course the absence of most material behind paywalls that won't be in any public archives that substantially survive. They'll get more from acid-free paper archives under mountains than anything digital I expect.
com··on Dating app categories could be shaping you more than you know
Tight feedback loops, and where hookups are the goal then it's a real dopamine cycle. I'm guessing we'll be dealing with the impact of this for decades before we as a society manage to deal with it properly.
com··on Star Trek, The Culture, and the meaning of life
Given the way the world feels now, I’d really love to return to a kindergarten where every day is growth, discovery and fun without existential dread.

My vote is for the Culture where the hedonism is balanced by good deeds - such as a hand discretely extended - for those crawling out of the mud looking at the stars which the culture leaves as close to untouched and untrammelled as they can.

com··on Good system design
The advice about logging and metrics was good.

I had been nodding away about state and push/pull, but this section grabbed my attention, since I’ve never seen it do clearly articulated before.

com··on Belgium bans Internet Archive's ‘Open Library’
The Overton Window isn’t just about political topics, it’s about the governance tools available for use.
com··on The unreasonable effectiveness of an LLM agent loop with tool use
As the project management saying goes: 99% done is much closer to 0% done than 100% done
com··on US vs. Google amicus curiae brief of Y Combinator in support of plaintiffs [pdf]
I was looking for a citation and instead found a number of vague or biased papers.

Suprisingly there’s an archived DoJ page that says that the same remedies may have been much cheaper to achieve through other means.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/att-divestiture-was-it-...

YMMV. I don’t agree with the narrowness of this analysis, and would like to see some links to academic studies in economics and the study of innovation tbh.

com··on Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
I agree. But I just looked at Le Shuttle’s pages on security and they claim to put 100% of trucks through millimeter wavelength scanners (presumably to detect unauthorised travellers) and x-ray systems that are supposed to detect arms and explosives.
com··on Reports of the death of California High-Speed Rail have been greatly exaggerated
International HSTs with passport required border crossings (ie Schengen-UK) have passport control and security - I think the security checks are to minimise the risk of terror attacks in the channel tunnel though.

But yeah, for intra-Schengen you just go to the platform a few minutes before departure, find where your carriage will be, and step in once the train comes to a stop.

So much less faff than air travel, and I’ve noticed better pubs at major stations meaning waiting for your train isn’t as boring as it used to be…

com··on Intel to announce 20% workforce reduction
Click on expand article just underneath the install app CTA.
com··on CVE program faces swift end after DHS fails to renew contract
Canada’s been described as the Ukraine of North America.

Let’s not site global critical infrastructure within 150km of US land borders for a generation, please.

com··on Nominal Aphasia: Problems in Name Retrieval
My fathers mother couldn’t remember the name of the city she was in, just used the name of where she lived for years. Couldn’t remember most proper nouns, including the names of her kids, so would just recite the list until she got to the last one.

My fathers brothers and sisters had it bad too.

My and my sister have it just a bit, but have good/funny/memorable coping strategies such as holding words while we dig up mnemonics, as do some of our cousins from that side.

com··on Leaked data reveals Israeli govt campaign to remove pro-Palestine posts on Meta
The ease of making copies of digital data, the ease of indexing them is totally different from books, just as writing, clay tablets, scrolls and books were from a purely oral society.
com··on Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic
That’s certainly not being posited in this particular thread.
com··on Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic
But those cars, as has been explained to you, don’t do nearly as many trips per year.

Mobility in families is actually higher, since each individual has sturdy legs, and highly likely, a bike after they’re about 5 years old. Kids often travel to school, after school events etc on foot, bike or public transport, not dependent as in many car-centric places on parents and their cars.

Grandma is as likely to bike over for dinner with the grandkids as drive.

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