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PocketBook – DIY pocket-sized Project Gutenberg books

https://github.com/sieste/pocketbook
1•sieste•6m ago•0 comments

LLM Security Guide – 100 tools and real-world attacks from 370 experts

https://github.com/requie/LLMSecurityGuide
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Why Does the Universe Exist? (1991) [pdf]

https://philosophy.fas.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum4436/files/phildept/files/parfit_-_why_doe...
1•measurablefunc•7m ago•0 comments

Scaling up Prime Video monitoring service reduced costs 90% (archive) (2023)

https://web.archive.org/web/20240325042615/https://www.primevideotech.com/video-streaming/scaling...
1•Ellipsis753•7m ago•1 comments

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https://yeikoff.xyz/blog/11-02-2025-do-i-want-coders-to-code/
1•iglesiastj•10m ago•0 comments

Trump Officials Torpedoed Nvidia's Push to Export AI Chips to China

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/trump-nvidia-china-chip-exports-51e00415
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HedgeDoc – self-hosted real-time collaborative Markdown notes

https://hedgedoc.org
2•indigodaddy•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: LayoffKit – Free visa-aware planner for laid-off workers(AI+automation)

https://layoffkit.com
2•smalldezk•15m ago•0 comments

AI Is the Bubble to Burst Them All

https://www.wired.com/story/ai-bubble-will-burst/
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Unpacking the ROI of Intimidation

https://supremefounder.com/due-diligence-nightmare.html
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Is 67 just brain rot?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laZpTO7IFtA
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A Fight over Credit Scores Turns into All-Out War

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/a-fight-over-credit-scores-turns-into-all-out-war...
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Glass Knife

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_knife
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Write once, deploy everywhere Python apps

https://beeware.org/
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The Curious Case of the Disappearing Captcha

https://www.wired.com/story/bizarre-disappearing-captcha/
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Would Zohran Mamdani's Rent Freeze Keep Rent-Stabilized Apartments Empty?

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3•PaulHoule•25m ago•1 comments

Obsidian Entertainment's AI support forwards emails to Obsidian support

https://twitter.com/kepano/status/1985467083170464149
2•kepano•25m ago•0 comments

The Problem with This Humanoid Robot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j31dmodZ-5c
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100 Hours to Shanghai

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Vectorless, Vision-Based RAG

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Experience with SimpleX Chat: Ultimate Open Source Private Messaging App? (2024)

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Amazon imposing fees on using their marketplace API

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Nordstrom Pivots to a Catalog

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Show HN: 0forms

https://0form.vercel.app/
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Tech hiring still hasn't recovered from 2022 – and may not soon

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4•lukasm•35m ago•0 comments

Knowledge model is key to having working enterprise AI

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Resend is launching inbound emails

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Thought-Provoking Sports Training

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Assume Culture/Stories/News has failed as politics adopted ARGs as a format

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1•Marshferm•46m ago•1 comments
Open in hackernews

Show HN: I was tired of wasting engineer time on screening calls so I built Niju

https://niju.dev
14•radug14•5h ago

Comments

radug14•5h ago
Hi everyone, I’m Radu.

In my personal experience, screening software engineers has always put pressure on internal engineering teams. Over the years, I’ve tried different approaches to streamline the process, but nothing has really fixed the problem of investing engineering time into screening.

At the start of the year I went through BetterStack’s recruitment process. Their first stage, an in-house built async screening test, was a revelation for me. I thought this was a fantastic alternative for an early stage in the recruitment pipeline. Back in February, while I was actively hiring at the startup I was working with, I prototyped a solution and trialed it - it was a success.

Fast forward a few months and I’ve now been able to turn the early prototype into a product. Meet Niju.

Niju replaces the traditional screening call with a 20-minute, asynchronous, recorded coding session.

A candidate gets a link, shares their screen, and "thinks aloud" while solving a practical coding challenge (no abstract algorithms).

After 20 minutes, Niju analyses the entire session: the code, the audio, and the thought process. It gives the hiring manager a concise report, transcripts, code playback and the raw footage with the important parts annotated. This means that, on average, a Niju interview takes 5 minutes to review.

* Cheating: Yes, a candidate can use Google. That's the point. I want to see how they solve a problem, not what they've memorised. The screen recording shows their whole process.

* AI: The AI does not produce a "pass/fail" decision. It just summarises the data to help a human make a better, faster, and more consistent decision.

* Stack: As a solo builder, I'm keeping it simple: SvelteKit, DrizzleORM, BullMQ, Postgres, Redis, Azure OpenAI.

The goal is to help busy engineering teams reclaim their time.

You can try the first interview for free.

I’ll be here for a while to answer questions and I'd be honored to get your feedback.

Radu

abtinf•5h ago
I hope your product sees some adoption. Use of such a system would be a high-signal indicator for companies to avoid.
radug14•5h ago
May I ask why?

I would never approve the use of async interviews further down the pipeline, but for screening purposes (from a candidate POV) I personally don't have any problems.

Keen to hear your point of view!

parliament32•5h ago
Because interviews are a two-way street. If you can't commit the time to interview and want to offload it to AI, why shouldn't I also have AI take the interview for me? Or you do you think my time is worth less than yours?

This is pretty gross, honestly. I recommend some reflection.

radug14•4h ago
Your time is definitely not worth less than the company you are applying to. And I 100% agree interviews should not be offloaded to AI.

This is a screening interview, and the AI component simply assists the hiring manager, it does not automate the outcome in any way.

riku_iki•4h ago
But we don't know if hiring person spends quality time on looking at all these recordings and transcripts, or just do some superficial keyword matching thing or AI signal.
vladg1994•4h ago
I agree with you on this one sure, but at the same time you wouldn't know if the hiring manager would be spending time looking over your CV if you send it. I don't see where's the fault of the app.
riku_iki•20m ago
It takes 5 sec for me to send CV, but here you ask for 20 mins commitment from my side.
parliament32•4h ago
So you wouldn't be opposed to me using an AI to solve your "challenge" or whatever it is? After all, this is just a screening interview, the AI component is simply assisting me.
radug14•4h ago
Absolutely, you can solve the challenge in any way you like. You can use AI, StackOverflow, or a friend you have in the room.
yannyu•5h ago
If as a hiring organization, you aren't willing to spend the effort, time, and money to provide a good recruiting process, that's a huge red flag for the kind of candidates you want and the kind of employee experience you provide. If you're willing to cut costs in finding candidates, that could signal you're willing to cut costs for retaining candidates too.
esafak•5h ago
This is a screen, though; they are still going to interview you if you pass. The alternative is to screen candidates otherwise in a way that may lead you to be culled (e.g., by your resume) without a chance to get your foot in the door.
gpm•4h ago
They are still going to interview if you choose to move forwards with this one sided time sink [1], and you pass. The first half of that criteria will filter out many of the good candidates.

Which as yanyu says is a signal the company isn't "willing to spend the effort, time, and money to provide a good recruiting process, [which is] a huge red flag for the kind of candidates you want and the kind of employee experience you provide".

Which circles around and creates even more incentive for good candidates not to participate.

There's no doubt a market on both sides for hiring mediocre candidates. Approximately everyone has a job after all, not just the best people, but a tool like this is clearly optimizing for that not for excellence.

[1] See the excellent description of why this is problematic as a candidate who values your own time here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45801853

yannyu•4h ago
That's what makes people feel valued and human, needing to get past a robot before they're allowed to talk to people.

And to be clear, I think hiring today is completely broken already. This kind of thing is just one more step in the direction of marginalizing people who are already struggling to find work. In an already broken hiring system, these approaches to "save engineering time" or "drive a more efficient hiring process" exacerbate the divide between those who have jobs and those who are desperate to get a fair shot, and that’s what feels truly dehumanizing.

esafak•4h ago
Logically, you should prefer a hiring system that casts a wider net using automation if you are struggling to find work, assuming the problem is getting an interview.
radug14•4h ago
I agree and I would never use AI to properly interview someone.

This is a screening interview. It's at the top of the recruitment funnel. The alternative is seeing fewer candidates (because you can't have engineers do non-stop interviews) or just filtering heavily based on CVs. Neither option is good.

yannyu•4h ago
If you as a hiring manager are so busy you can't invest in a thoughtful recruitment process, what's that going to mean when I come onboard? Will I be left to fend for myself in those first few months, feeling overwhelmed by all the new information and team dynamics? Or is it somehow going to be different once I'm employed by you?
vladg1994•4h ago
The way I see it, if you are a hiring manager you are just going to talk to a HR person to screen this people for you actually. The majority of CV's that get to the Hiring Manager get filtered by non-technical HR people. Instead you have a tool that sumarizes the way you interact and think on a 20 min problem solving thingy. Imho I prefer to get a hold of this then having a HR person call me for 15 minutes and talk about my experience and stuff...
rendall•5h ago
Back in the day, some kind of online sticker company needed a developer. I submitted my resume and they told me via email I needed to pass an online test. The testing was very similar to your company, only of course no AI. I was nervous. Super nervous. Shaking. Psyched myself up for an entire day, then logged in and absolutely crushed it. Crushed that test. It was hard but easier than I expected. Passed 100%. The sticker company then emailed me that they chose someone else, somebody else had a better resume, even though there was no interview. The test was cheap for them, but cost me. So cheap for this sticker company that they could afford to consider my resume only after I had crushed their dumb-ass test.

There needs to be some cost or pain for the interviewers to signal that they actually care.

So, to answer your question, if a company were to outsource their screening calls, it signals to me that they do not have the time to understand their candidates. They simply do not care, which means they don't care for their employees either.

radug14•4h ago
Again I want to make it clear that the AI is not driving any decisions, it just summarizes some data points.

The technical screening call typically happens after an initial screening chat with HR or the hiring manager. The tech screening interview comes in after that.

rendall•4h ago
I tell you, this is not a new idea. The only new bit is that AI is slapped on, but it's been done. There is a reason it's not widespread practice. Be honest with yourself: if a company gave you a contract and they decided to do it like the sticker company, test first then check the resume, you would still take their money.
rendall•4h ago
Also, every company has its own unique need. Are you going to tailor your test for every company? Some will need fast JavaScript, some will need slow, deliberate FP. No single test will cover all of these needs. A serious company would never outsource their initial contact to AI.
radug14•4h ago
To your other replies, again, this is a screening interview. It aims to assess, in a short time, how you approach a day to day coding problem. It's not about specialised technical requirements - for that you jump on a dedicated technical call. Niju is supposed to sit at the beginning of the technical assessment process.
rendall•4h ago
Sure. You don't have to convince me. I mean, go for it. We're just telling you why we would exit the process immediately as candidates. As an employer, I would take the time to screen someone directly.
radug14•3h ago
This is a super tough, but incredibly valuable thread. Thank you all for the raw feedback.

I need to be clear: I 100% agree with the core sentiment here. As a candidate, the hiring process is often broken, dehumanising, and feels like a one-way street. Many of you are right when saying a tool like this could be abused.

I'm not trying to automate the human part of hiring. I'm trying to fix the part that's already broken.

The real-world alternative at most companies isn't a friendly 1-hour chat with a senior engineer for every single applicant, that just doesn’t scale.

The alternative is:

1. A harsh, biased CV filter that rejects 95% of applicants in a couple of seconds.

2. A 4-hour take-home exercise that massively wastes your time and is genuinely pointless because anyone can vibe code it.

3. An algorithm test from a platform like HackerRank for which the majority of engineers have to prep many hours.

I built Niju to be less painful than those. It's a 20-minute, practical, "think-aloud" test. The AI's only job is to summarise the data so a human can review it faster, making it more likely they'll widen the funnel and give more people a shot beyond just their CV.

My goal isn't to replace engineers but to stop wasting their time on a broken process, so they can have better, human interviews with the top 20% of candidates.

It's a massive challenge, and this thread, as well as most of the others, show the raw nerve I've hit.

t_mann•5h ago
Do you realize that your product will only lead to more time being wasted on the side of the applicants, who are already the weaker party? How do you justify that?
radug14•5h ago
Hey! I think it's quite the opposite, and I'll explain why.

Let me just apply one example. A few years ago I was screening candidates over a 30-minute live coding interview covering pretty day to day stuff. That required a 30 minute investment from the applicant in what is a high-stress situation for many. I can't tell you how many times they seemed very stressed simply because they had to code in a live interview setting knowing someone is actively watching what they are doing.

Now compare that to a 20-minute screening interview where most of that pressure is gone. You can do it whenever you want to.

That is my rationale behind it, thinking both as an applicant and as a hiring manager.

Why do you think this leads to more wasted time?

t_mann•4h ago
How is "most of that pressure gone"? You're still being evaluated and have to code against a clock, with less time, less opportunities to ask questions and less immediate feedback that could get you back on track.

Also, your 20 vs 30 minute calculation ignores that companies are incentivized to conduct more screening tests if it becomes practically free for them. But the number of positions stays the same. So if instead of 10 screening calls they do 16 tests for one position, that's already more time being wasted, even if the tests are 1/3 shorter. And realistically, the number will shoot up much more.

radug14•4h ago
The challenges are designed for an average engineer at the job opening level (junior, mid, senior) to solve in approximately 10 minutes. Furthermore, they are practical day-to-day tasks that should not put pressure just by nature of what's being asked.

For your last point, a review takes on average 5 minutes for a hiring manager. And I think screening more is not inherently a problem. Imagine they turned down the dial on their CV filters and had more applicants do a technical screen - wouldn't that give more applicants an opportunity to shine? In most cases it unfortunately is a numbers game.

gpm•4h ago
You're literally making the argument for why the problematic scenario the person you are responding to will occur. It costs nothing to waste the candidates time with this tool, so people will "turn down the dial" and do that.

They'll keep running screenings after they've got someone they're almost sure they are going to hire, because if the deal falls through its better to have candidates in the pipeline.

They'll run screenings before they bother to evaluate if they're even interested in a candidates skill set, because you've made it cheaper to filter out candidates for lack of technical skills than lack of job fit. (And no forcing them to meet the candidate once before running this tool will not change the fact that they will do this)

And so on and so forth. Which is ironically why using this tool would filter the best candidates from the hiring pipeline while simultaneously making life worse for everyone who isn't one of the best candidates and who does have to put up with many companies wasting their time to get a single job offer.

t_mann•4h ago
So in summary, there is actually no pressure that would need resolving, and time being wasted by applicants is a good thing?
radug14•4h ago
And is that not how hiring works today, or are we pretending that hiring processes are completely fair and non-biased?

How many companies still ask for take-home exercises?

riku_iki•4h ago
> Now compare that to a 20-minute screening interview where most of that pressure is gone. You can do it whenever you want to.

how its gone? Candidate is still being judged, but now by unknown potential AI judge without understanding how he will be judged..

radug14•4h ago
There is no AI judge.
helicone•4h ago
Because an automated screening system allows the company to screen many more candidates without interacting with them, which they will do, which will make the majority of these screenings wasted effort.

Let's look at two cases to see why this is: Case 1: company does 10 30 minute in-person technical interviews for a role for equally qualified candidates, doesn't use automated testing. Every candidate knows that because they're talking to a human, so they know they're dealing with a human hiring process that deals with time constraints. They KNOW that they're one of a small group of people selected to move forward. They can reasonably calculate a value for their in-person technical interview as having a 10% chance of success. If they do 7 interviews like this they have a >50% chance of getting hired by someone, which would take them only 3.5 hours of interview time to achieve. Each such hiring process has only take up a combined 5 hours of candidate time.

Contrast this with case 2: company uses your system, and so technically screens 1000 equally qualified candidates in the same period with no human interaction. The candidate now has no idea where they stand in the applicant pool, but they effectively have a 0.1% of getting hired by this company. If they do 666 interviews, they still don't have a 50% chance of getting hired by any company doing interviews like this, and they will have spent two whole weeks of their life not eating or sleeping, just doing interviews. That company will have wasted three weeks of candidate time conducting this round of interviews.

Furthermore, the 10 minute time difference is irrelevant, the candidate already doesn't care when they do the interview, and the pressure in no way lessened. They still have to perform in a 30 minute window, and they will still be nervous. The only difference is the recorded screening is more impersonal, which allows the candidate less opportunity to make a human impression on the hirer.

Your system assumes the applicant's time has no value.

radug14•4h ago
If they do what you said, they will have no way to actually differentiate between candidates so they will waste their time and money on using my platform. Doing screening calls asynchronously doesn't open the floodgates.
whatsakandr•5h ago
The purpose of a screening is not to determine competence, it is to determine whether recruit and company want to work together, which cannot be automated.
radug14•4h ago
I understand and agree, but this is a technical screening. Typically you would have someone from HR have an initial conversation with the applicant to align. This comes after, if it's a go from both parties.

Furthermore, Niju does not automate the decision. AI is only used to create a transcript, a summary of the interview with, a list of important moments and a set of indicative scores on a number of criteria.

The decision is always with the human.

gpm•4h ago
As a candidate I'm no more "done" evaluating the company after a first screening then the company is done evaluating me.

As someone with the privilege to be able to reject job opportunities, it's all but certain running into a tool like this would result in me immediately doing so.

vorpalhex•4h ago
If you can't take time to screen me, I can't take time to be bothered with your company.

Hiring is the most important part of your job.

doctor_radium•4h ago
I'm more a syadmin type than a developer, but still get hit with online "testing" requests sometimes: a couple SQL tests for some support position, a couple psychological tests, etc. These are now a hard line for me. Why? Maybe I misunderstand...but my time is valuable, too. If HR or the hiring manager wants to reach out for a round 1 interview and then tell me a week later I'm one of your top candidates, and would I please take some online testing to continue the process, fine. But not the other way around.
radug14•4h ago
Yes. Niju is not meant to be your first interaction with the company. You first speak to the hiring manager and only then you proceed to this stage.