toddhd

We're all software engineers (OK, a lot of us are software engineers). As someone in the computer business, hackers always fascinate me. Admittedly, I'm not a hacker, not in the "break into a secure system and take control of it" sense of the word.

Today I saw this article (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/30/google-rep...). I'm sure you've seen similar ones recently, from large companies and other countries. When you think about companies like Yahoo and Google, you realize that we are talking about some very, very smart people. These are not easy companies to get into. Their interviews are designed to screen out all but the very best, the most elite programmers. And when you are basically the "go to website" for most of the known world, you spend a LOT of time on things like security, and tracking requests, etc. And let's be honest, Google and Yahoo are in the business of tracking other websites - it is their bread and butter. They understand it and know it.

So I ask myself - HOW? How did the government manage to find and acquire programmers so skilled, so elite, that they are even smarter than the Google and Yahoo guys tied together? Moreover, how did they manage to consistently hack them?

To my knowledge, there are two main ways to get into a system. The first is what most people assume - that's a brute force attack. Find a weakness in the system, exploit that weakness, break in and do what you can before pappa bear catches you and kicks you out. Not a very effective approach for long term information gathering, right? And once done, the exploit is usually addressed.

The other way is to get someone "on the inside" to help. Get them hired, and then get them to covertly build a "back door" for them, an easy way in. This too is way easier said than done on so many levels. I don't know about you, but there are several guys on my team, and when security changes are made, there are lots of people who are aware of it, and would likely see it. It would be tough for me to build a back door without someone seeing it being checked in. Or able to find it easily, even just "tripping over it".

But I digress. In order to hack Google, Yahoo, France, Germany, yada yada yada, you'd have to get an inside guy, a super-elite smarter-than-google type of hacker into every one of those places. They'd have to have elite hackers growing on a farm somewhere if nothing else, and then all the connections everywhere to secretly get them hired and into positions of security and power. HOW???

I just don't understand. I seems like a unrealistic task to me. Maybe that's why I'm a run of the mill engineer however... :)

- On your resume, don't list what you did, list what you accomplished. For example, wrong = "Wrote new SQL and bug-fixed existing SQL on web application". Right = "Reduced a long running SQL call from 8 hours to 20 minutes" - Also try to avoid "fuzzy" statements on your resume. Make your accomplishments quantifiable. Wrong = "Rewrote a VB program so that it was a lot faster". Right = "Rewrote a VB program, reducing average run time from 60 minutes to 15 minutes" - Be prepared to defend any statement on your resume. If you made that program faster, be prepared to explain how and why - Apply for some jobs you don't really want before you apply for the ones you DO want. This is because interviewing is an art, and it really helps to "get in the mode" first. If you going to bomb the first few interviews, make them ones you don't care about so much. - Turn off your cell phone. Better yet, leave it in the car. - Have a personality. Hiring is still mostly about who "fits" the job. If they like you, half the battle is over. At the same time, don't be "chummy" with the interviewer. If you act like you two are best friends and should go out for a beer together, it feels kiss-assy and rarely if ever bodes well for you. - Prepare to answer common questions. Why do want to work here? Why should we hire you? What are you most proud of? What is your weakness? What was a time you had a conflict at work? Almost everyone asks these, and and sucks to answer with some dumb example. - Always try to rephrase the question asked to you before answering it. e.g. "Tell us about your SQL experience" - you reply, "So you want to know what kind of SQL projects I've worked on?" This makes sure you understand what was asked, and it also gives you a moment to think. - If you don't know, say you don't know - Have examples of your work. Code snippets are great, screenshots of UI's you've worked on, etc. When I bomb their pop-quiz (and I always bomb their pop-quiz, I suck at testing) it really helps to tell them that you can show them code from your daily job that better represents you on a daily basis. - Never talk badly about other jobs, even if they were awful. Try to have a reason for switching jobs (e.g. They were a great place to work, but there was really no chance for job advancement) as opposed to "That was a soul sucking job and they can kiss my ass" - Understand that most people performing tech interviews have ZERO training in doing so. If they aren't asking you questions that put you in your best light, then help them out, and offer up that information.

"Click" is 50% easier :)

I do UI\UX design and coding for a living, so when I look at things like this, it flags me. For example, let's say that someone designed a car where you had to stick your finger in your ear while turning the key to start it. I could honestly say to you, "It's not that difficult to stick your finger in your ear while turning the key", and that's true enough. But... would you buy that car? I mean, why is it really necessary in the first place?

Most news aggregate web sites that I visit on a daily basis link to a new tab. This is very helpful, because I can browse down the page and click the links I'm interested in without losing the page I'm on at the time, then go read the articles, and tab back and forth to the list of news articles I was looking at. This works well and is how I "expect" it to work.

As the owner of a news aggregate web site, I want people to be "on and reading" my site. I don't want them to navigate away from my site, I want them to STAY on my site. To that end, having every single link on the page navigate away from the site makes no sense whatsoever, and requires extra care on behalf of my readers to use the site in a way that it should really work in the first place. That's inefficient and not in the best interests of HN or its readers.

This looks like a cool service, and I am starting on a new project that might benefit from something like this. But the page failed to load 3 times, and the 4th time it took about 10 minutes to load. Maybe you are just getting overloaded from HN visitors, but still, that's a problem.

Do you also offer this as a service that can be implemented natively from another application? In other words, I'd rather not go to your homepage to do this, I'd prefer the customer add his/her information on my website, and have the processes automated with the results sent to me.

As an ex-Digger, I can tell you that it was Digg that killed Digg for me. At one point in time, Digg was cool. Granted, it was still mostly a rehash of news from Reddit, 4Chan and other sites, but the audience base was large enough to provide original content as well, and the UI was considerably better than any of the other sites.

What killed it (for me anyway) was that Digg suddenly allowed advertisers to start posting away. Ads popped up everywhere, and every other post from directly from Mashable. Digg was no longer cool, and mostly, it was Mashable's alternative site. :)

I switched to Reddit. Reddit didn't like all the Digg users migrating over initially, but attitudes have cooled over time. I can't really see a move that Digg could make at this point that would entice me back.