Hacker News Reader

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spcelzrdon Ask HN: Were you ask for references before being hired?

I was hired (W2) by a staffing firm to fill a role. I interviewed with the client where I would be doing the work, and was offered the contract position. As part of the onboarding process with the staffing firm, I was then asked for references which they checked.

I wonder what would have happened if my references didn't check out. Would they then inform the customer that I wasn't available? Would they turn their back on almost a $100,000 in revenue (the portion they would take from my contract)?

Makes no sense.

spcelzrdon Ask HN: What are some of the best job boards you have seen (any industry)?

Would be interesting to see an ROI by career.

spcelzrdon Ask HN: How do I show recruiters my work on a platform for paid users only?

I've been a software developer for 20+ years, and almost all of my work has been on things I can't show to potential employers. Tell a story about how you made an impact, use screenshots or video to supplement, but don't try to "prove" anything. If they don't believe you, then you don't want to work there or you need to get better at telling your story.

(This doesn't apply to designers, or people trying to get a job based on UIs they've created.)

spcelzrdon Tumblr’s Unclear Future

The link highlighting on that page is bonkers. Not sure I trust what nymag.com is saying about internet culture.

Also: "It’s tough to generate revenue when your most active user base is too young to have a steady income."

Really?

spcelzrdon What would you have done to prevent the ETHereum flash crash on Coinbase yday?

Other markets like NYSE and NASDAQ have circuit breakers. If an index declines by a certain amount, all trading is halted so people can think and sort out their positions. This doesn't stop a single stock from flash crashing, but transactions during a flash crash are frequently reversed.

spcelzrdon On a Wonderful, Beautiful, Almost Failed Sentence by Virginia Woolf

Writing and coding have a lot in common. I really enjoyed this article.

spcelzrdon Ask HN: What do you do with old technical books?

I would like to find some books on Forth. I just dump my old books in a donation bin.

spcelzrdon The most accurate map for August 21’s total solar eclipse

My first thought: how will this affect traffic.

I've been in Atlanta too long.

spcelzrdon Automattic is closing its San Francisco office as most employees work remotely

"Better to just pick and choose who you want to keep."

But cheaper if they pick themselves.

spcelzrdon Celebrate the web by using another browser than Google’s Chrome

I use Brave sometimes. It's nice. But I switch browsers a lot.

I don't use Chrome except for development because Google is invasive.

spcelzrdon Ask HN: What are the most used productivity tools in your tech job?

For some definitions of "better"

spcelzrdon WebAssembly: Mozilla Won

What happened is tighter integration with google services and every time you go to google.com, there's a prompt to download Chrome.

spcelzrdon The Judy Malware: Possibly the largest malware campaign found on Google Play

There will always be bad actors, but I can't understand why Google tolerates low level malware. At least make them work a little.

spcelzrdon Google’s AlphaGo Defeats Chinese Go Master in Win for A.I

In the future, only poets will have jobs.

j/k someone will have to program the poets

spcelzrdon Ask HN: Why is Reddit worth so little?

I love the fact that reddit chooses to stay small and sustainable.

Twitter is taking the opposite path and they do everything in their power to alienate their most passionate users. However, I think Twitter is infrastructure now, like Facebook and LinkedIn, and it would be very difficult to disrupt or displace.

spcelzrdon CEOs Want Their Offices Back

Makes you wonder why more companies don't measure these things. Google and Facebook A/B test button colors, but can't be bothered to measure programmer productivity in any scientific way.

spcelzrdon Ask HN: What will coding be like in 25 years?

25 years ago it was much the same as it is today. In 1992 people were typing ASCII characters into a text editor and debugging with logs and print statements.

You can do so much more with a line of code now and there are so many more ways to make user interfaces, but the fundamental actions of the programmer are the same.

spcelzrdon Why Amazon is eating the world

I believe Walmart is a destructive force in society and I won't shop there. If they rebranded as something else, I wouldn't shop there.

spcelzrdon Ask HN: Who is building “long lived” software?

Not what you're looking for, but I made a Twitter bot that has been running uninterrupted and unmodified for 3 years.

Also, the Space Jam website is up and unmodified since 1996.

spcelzrdon How to Be Someone People Love to Talk To (2015)

I'm not particularly good in group settings, but here's a strategy I've found that works in most cases: give the person a complement, then ask them a question about themselves. It's important that the complement isn't about their appearance or something that might make them uncomfortable. And keep the question light.

spcelzrdon Mac Pro: Failure and Future

"Three senior execs sit down with five reliable (meaning no clickbait)"

Not that these aren't great journalists, but Buzzfeed, Tech Crunch, and Mashable are no strangers to clickbait.