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purringmeowon We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

Reading HN is really weird for me. Everyone is talking about how the industry is struggling to find new people. Meanwhile, being in Central Europe, I almost can't find a junior position to even apply to!

I am a 2nd year CS student looking for a web-dev job to get experience and learn new stuff and every ad I see requires a couple of years in the industry + knowledge of a huge amount of frameworks. From my viewpoint, there is no real need for beginner devs. Companies are looking for really experienced AND cheap programmers.

purringmeowon French Senate Backs Bid To Force Google To Disclose Search Algorithm Workings

the upper house of parliament yesterday voted to support an amendment to a draft economy bill that would require search engines to display at least three rivals on their homepage

That's just absurd. Can someone acquainted with the situation shed light on why they are doing this? Simple populism and lobbying from local businesses or something else?

purringmeowon German court issues nationwide ban on Uber driving services

They already have an insurance that covers the passengers.

purringmeowon German court issues nationwide ban on Uber driving services

Absolutely, I agree with you! It's time to deregulate the taxi industry, because needing a license to drive people around is absurd. Yes, you should need insurance, but in most EU countries, the already required insurance covers all passengers. Each car must also pass an yearly technical review. What more do you need? Someone posted that drivers aren't vetted - there is no better vetting system than the instantaneous feedback from the app. Feedback, given by tens or hundreds of clients.

purringmeowon German court issues nationwide ban on Uber driving services

How do you know that people can't live on the wages you are talking about? Why would people drive for Uber if they aren't profiting enough from the job?

purringmeowon German court issues nationwide ban on Uber driving services

How does Uber exploit its employees? Nobody is making drivers sign-up for Uber. Nobody is keeping them signed-up by force.

The whole problem with Uber can be solved if governments deregulate the taxi industry. I absolutely agree that you need an insurance that covers the passengers, but what else except more frequent technical checks? Taxi licenses are an artificial way to control the supply, so I am adamantly against them.

purringmeowon Tunneling Internet traffic over FB chat

I am pretty much a beginner dev, so can anyone briefly explain how this works? It's not really clear to me from the code.

It's mentioned in the README that packets are being sent as base64. Let's say I would like to send a GET request to google.com. How does Facebook Chat serve me with google's page?

purringmeowon Show HN: Picnic.css, a lightweight Bootstrap alternative

Some of us like that you get cross-browser and device tested code that is super easy to use. You can choose what parts of Bootstrap to include in your app, so you don't bloat it.

Would you elaborate what you mean by fighting? Bootstrap is extremely simple to customize and I am no front-end guru.

purringmeowon Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months?

Cold call and email what companies? About what work? I doubt most of the mid-sized and big companies will hire a contractor with no recommendations from someone close to the execs.

I am not nitpicking, just sharing that what you've suggested works only for very experienced people with a big network. I am still in University.

purringmeowon Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months?

There is also a strange obsession with consulting. How do you find customers that aren't mom and pop shops looking for someone to build their site for $200?

purringmeowon Bonuses Are the New Raises

How did that happen? Did you need more XP for the higher-paying jobs and got it from the previous ones?

purringmeowon The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More

And that's why truck driving is the perfect job to automate.

purringmeowon Russia enacts 'draconian' law for bloggers and online media

Nope, it seems counterintuitive that educated people might support someone who is pretty much a dictator, but they do. Russian mentality is different and seems odd to westerners.

purringmeowon UK to allow driverless cars on public roads in January

Why have manned gas stations? That's actually pretty easy to automate, since the trucks are stationery and there is already a standard for fuel tank holes. I am 100% sure that 30-40 years from now on, we are going to have automated trucks & gas stations with automated payments done from a system that computes routes based on thousands of variables.

purringmeowon UK to allow driverless cars on public roads in January

True, it's expensive to replace new trucks. But if it's a lot cheaper in the long term, it would be a serious incentive to push for the removal of drivers. And yeah, I too think that computers will get gradually implemented. Though I am sure the process will be 100% automated in the end.

purringmeowon UK to allow driverless cars on public roads in January

That occupation will disappear, save for a few high-end human driver services, IMO.

After the taxis come the trucks. I am quite certain shipping companies will be the quick ditch humans. After all, this means no more travel expenses & salaries, no more breaks, probably automatic unloading too! Goods will get cheaper, although hundreds of thousands of people will be out of work.

I am scared.

purringmeowon Employment rates for STEM Ph.D.s are down or stagnant across the board

That kind of offshoring is definitely bad, IMO. We aren't talking about outsourced PHP web development sweatshops, but incredibly high-tech research. As one poster below mentioned, you are losing institutional knowledge & traditions. That has to have a negative long term effect on your economy.

purringmeowon Ask HN: What do you think of this first employee offer?

Then maybe look for someone in Central or Eastern Europe? This salary would be decent there.

purringmeowon HN Hiring mapped

True, but I don't want to do enterprise Java or PHP, so there isn't anything else left for me in my region :(

purringmeowon HN Hiring mapped

What do you mean?

I am 20 years old and I can't have XP with 20 stacks/languages, although I am quite open to learning new stuff. Sadly, there are only so much technologies in demand where I am located.

purringmeowon HN Hiring mapped

Seems nobody is hiring interns for RoR or JavaScript backend/full-stack in Europe. Pity :(

purringmeowon Source code for the Apollo 11 Guidance Computer

I don't think so. I believe that code is really tightly coupled with the hardware and at least some part of it covers unique cases.

However, these LoC have been written almost 50 years ago! That's truly fascinating.

purringmeowon This is a blog post that’s incredibly confusing and painful for me to write

False allegations are far from being rare.

You also have to acknowledge that when you have a rape accusation, there isn't a boolean result(either the allegation is false, or it's true, meaning there was rape). It's a broad spectrum, with only around a third of the cases resulting in conviction.[1]

As far as I understand, only if there wasn't a sexual contact will the allegation be considered false. In other cases, there will be some sort of investigation. So, it's possible to have basis for allegation and NOT have rape.

Correct me if I am wrong though.

---

Of the 136 cases of sexual assault 8 (5.9%) were coded as false reports, 61 (44.9%) did not proceed to any prosecution or disciplinary action, 48 (35.3%) were referred for prosecution or disciplinary action, and 19 (13.9%) contained insufficient information to be coded (see Table 2).

[1]http://www.icdv.idaho.gov/conference/handouts/False-Allegati...

purringmeowon Hire More Women In Tech

Sadly, I doubt it will go away anytime soon, people just dislike the different, which isn't a bad thing in every case. Sometimes it fuels constructive criticism and discourse on a topic.

There is a reason why less women than men are going into tech, but I don't want to elaborate on that, since I am going to be downvoted into oblivion(and no, it's not intelligence).

purringmeowon Hire More Women In Tech

Not to mention the mocking most of us had to endure from the cool kids. I was systematically bullied, because of being a geek, who loved tech.

purringmeowon Retirement of Prof. Andy Tanenbaum

Find a used one, mine costed $7, albeit an older edition.

It's an extraordinarily written textbook. For me there are 2 types of technical books - the ones that I have to plow through with sheer willpower, and the ones that I read kinda like an interesting novel. Tannenbaum's book falls in the latter category.

purringmeowon Beautiful web type – typefaces from the Google web fonts directory

Oh, I just noticed it. But it's only the title, the rest is Merriweather.

purringmeowon Average IQ in Europe by country (map)

Why? Are you worried it might bring forward discussions about race superiority and that kind of crap?

In my opinion, this study can start a reasonable discourse on the difference between education systems.

purringmeowon Average IQ in Europe by country (map)

No, not necessarily the richer - I can spot a direct correlation between the quality of the education system and the IQ reported here. Finland, the country with maybe the best schools(not Universities, schools) in Europe is leading.

purringmeowon Beautiful web type – typefaces from the Google web fonts directory

Nice collection, although one in my opinion awesome font is missing - Lato.