I'm going to have to be the dissenter here.

Namecheap also does domain name front running and tasting, so it's not really any different.

No they don't. At least not in the way that GoDaddy does it... NameCheap does this with domains that have expired and domains that are searched and reserved but fail for some reason. Since part of the service they provide is contingent on covering for people in the event of failures (missed renewals, misspellings, etc.), NameCheap auto-renews domains and reserves variations of others when they're registered. If the user doesn't end up actually renewing the domain, they mark it up and sell it as a premium domain since they now have paid for a domain without a buyer. NameCheap mostly does this as a service for existing customers. GoDaddy, on the other hand, does it explicitly for the revenue they can generate from desperate people who need domains they previously searched for.

Doesn't match my experience. I used them to check the price of A...B...C...D....com.au which was available. A few days later, I came back to register it, just to find that that domain, ABC...D...com.au and ABCD.com.au are reserved and available via auction. Checking with national registrar directly I confirmed the domain is not reserved. With that information I contacted the namecheap support who gave me some direct "add to cart" url which was not normally available.

I don't trust any registrar anymore.

I think you're projecting some ill intent here on the part of NameCheap that may be unwarranted. It's quite possible that someone had purchased the domain but it failed for whatever reason or that the cached version of the whois database that NameCheap was using was outdated. I've tried to register a name from the .AZ (Azerbaijan) registry through multiple sites and was able to successfully place an order only to be refunded because the information in the registry was cached and almost 4 months out of date. Additionally, some registrars are not actually able to register certain TLDs and so they use a proxy service to facilitate the transaction. It's possible that NameCheap isn't even a .com.au registrar and was simply passing along a result from whoever they partner with to fulfill those requests.

I'm not disputing that what happened to you happened the way you describe it but I am disputing that NameCheap did anything nefarious in order for the situation to play out exactly as you've described.

Let me rephrase it. It is not scammy like GoDaddy, but it is scammy like when a newspaper publishes sponsored content.

It is not that important what happened behind the scene. In the end, I went to their site and I saw something that was not clearly marked as an ad. The listing looked almost exactly like their other listings. There, there was a button that said "buy", I clicked it and was unable to buy. It is the responsibility of NameCheap to make sure that their ads are not scammy. Just like if Facebook started showing porn ads, there would be blowback and people will stop using FAcebook.

Ok... but that's completely moving the goalposts from what you said earlier. I disagree that it's not clearly marked as an ad because, even in your screenshot, there's a link and a differentiator that says the domain is coming from Kingcom, not from NameCheap. You can ignore that or say that it's not clear enough for you and that's fine but the debate here was whether or not NameCheap was kiting and front-running domains like GoDaddy and my initial statement said that they were not. Your response was "Yes they do" and that's clearly not the case here.

Correct, I moved the goalpost because, thanks to your comment, I realized that saying that NameCheap is just as scammy as GoDaddy is an exaggeration. Nonetheless, I wouldn't trust a site with ads that outright lie. It's not like we are forced to choose between GoDaddy and NameCheap. There are other options that don't reserve searched domains, and don't show ads that lie. Since that is the case, I will opt for one of those other sites when looking to purchase a domain.

Again, you're projecting malicious intent. What's the difference, in your opinion, between a lie and a mistake? If NameCheap is labelling those domains (again, according to your own screenshot) as coming from a third-party and they get a bad response from that third party, what should their case be? The ad wasn't a lie. A lie assumes that the intent is to defraud or fool you. This sounds more like a mistake that, ultimately, didn't harm you in any way whatsoever.

That being said... you do you. I have no horse in the race with NameCheap. I just think their service is great and the customer support is awesome. If you prefer another registrar, you live your best life there.

I've never experienced this in my 5 or 6 years of using them (not definitively saying it doesn't happen). I frequently search for domains and then come back at a later date to purchase them for the exact price they were originally listed at.

Not really, no.

Raising the price of gas negatively affects the working poor more than helps the environment. That subset of society may not live in an area accessible by transit, or their employment requires them to be in a different location than is feasible to travel to by transit.

> Raising the price of gas negatively affects the working poor more than helps the environment

In the short run. In the long run, the proceeds could be used to encourage the working poor to move to cities where they don't need a car. Given how financially terrible car ownership is for America's poor--between traffic tickets, civil forfeiture, police violence, predatory lending and collection practices, insurance practices, et cetera--I think it would be a net boon.

This is a horribly naive statement which disregards the existence many different jobs other than office and retail.

> disregards the existence many different jobs other than office and retail

Gas taxes can be raised in a way that is neutral to our working poor. It's a minor adjustment to the lowest tax bracket.

So what? Should the environment be subsidizing a benefit to the poor? We have better ways to help the poor than to let them trash our planet.

You can raise the Federal gas tax, and simultaneously lower the bottom tax rate from 10% to 0%.

Trinity and Beyond narrated by William Shatner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_and_Beyond

This happened to me at Amazon the first time I visited HQ.

The interviewer was standing about six feet away intently watching for every mark I made, which made me freeze up and start rambling about stars shining, or something equally nonsensical.

Could that have been the dreaded 'stress interview'?

Having deployed and maintained both Confluence and MediaWiki, users like Confluence better.

Going from that to MediaWiki would feel cheap to them, or they just wouldn't use it because it would feel "hard".

As a former devout Fluxbox user, I concur with this comment. I use a pretty bog standard Gnome now. It's not really an active thought so much as something that Mostly Just Works.

My productivity is about the same, since I use the same applications. The only thing I don't have is an incessant need to fiddle and tweak.

Coincidentally, some of those same people who would say they don't primarily consider degrees will outright ask about education background when talking to a candidate.

The conversation will go generally positive. A month later of no contact/ghosting, and a form letter rejection pops out, with either the position being closed or "Unfortunately, we have decided to pursue other candidates whose background appears to match our needs more closely."

And that will be that.

I’ve been developing for 20+ years. I got my degree in the mid 90s. There is absolutely nothing I do today that my degree from a little state college in CS over 20 years ago helps with.

I’ve interviewed people for 15 of those years. None of the post interview discussions when we were deciding who to hire ever brought up there degree.

Well let me take that back, I know managers who would put people with degrees from Devry and online only schools at the bottom of the list and wouldn’t even consider them. Getting degrees from one of those schools were actually considered worse than no degree at all.

I don’t agree with that sentiment, but that’s the way of the world...

> That doesn't make sense to me... I think it's more likely that tech workers get higher salaries because they were/are in high demand, not to prevent unionization.

The inverse is exactly that, though. Higher wages give certain skilled individuals enough personal comfort to the point that they don't feel they need to stick their neck out for some group of randos. Sure, that $125k job with a small sack of RSUs looks pretty on paper, but break it down with all of the extra-curricular obligations, the occasional long week that happens a little too often, housing costs, commuting, and it doesn't look too appealing.

Once you have enough 'highly' paid individuals in a group -- we'll cut the number at $100k, even though that's the poverty level in the Bay Area -- then a backbuilding narrative begins to create itself, that because 'everyone' is at a a certain level, it's kind of just okay.

The trope of high demand, low supply of qualified individuals is pervasive in tech recruiting, to the point where some of the same individuals being oppressed question if there's an actual problem. It could also be explained away as that we're all just that unique and special, but that's stitching together another reality entirely.

Instead of agreeing that fellow humans are being oppressed, we tech workers muse and question the merit of sticking together, for one another. We question the quality of one's skills or ability to comprehend with not another thought. We even sometimes question if we're overly compensated, when overt actions or results would prove otherwise.

Very well said. Too much dry thought and almost no fertile community-oriented emotions.

With such a level of cynicism, nobody would ever be hired.

People game the system because a system exists to be gamed.

I was almost there with you until the bit about the gig economy. This reads more like an advert for Upwork.

People giving up leverage with labor just gives 'them' the upper hand. Why it's so hard for tech workers to band together over something as common as income is the problem, regardless of the disparity.

Teachers in my area are striking over much less money than tech workers fritter away on a daily basis. Sometimes it's worth standing outside with signs and waving at people passing.

There is no incentive. I get paid well and I am constantly getting called by recruiters from other blue chips and hot startups.

Tech workers will band together the day that ends. Not anytime soon. Same on Wall Street or with Snowdens colleagues in govt.

The incentive to come together as a group is not about how much an individual is paid, but to come together over a common ground and influence change that benefits the many over the few. Income is one of the most common things to throw out there because it encompasses pretty much everyone's life.

An individual can be paid handsomely, even if the group average is a fraction of the individual's number. Though you believe you are paid well, and you may very well be, it does not mean actions do not happen to suppress the momentum of someone sitting a desk or two away working toward the same goal as you.

A traditional union with collectively-bargained pay grades and seniority probably wouldn’t work in hi-tech but an even more traditional mediaeval style guild could work very well indeed.

Right: the guild certifies members are of a certain skill level, helping the members better negotiate for pay, time-off and other work terms.

Pay has not been an issue, but overwork has been, and so has the interview process. A union/guild backing could help with this.

How would a guild ascertain skill level except by doing relatively tough interviews?

The same way the professional engineers do e.g. chartered status I guess. The exact details we’d work out later.

The same ways that schools measure, through testing.

And what is an interview if not a test? Or are you advocating written exams only - I don't see why this would be better than a well designed interview process.

You don’t have to do it over and over for each job you apply for?

It also takes some onus off the hiring team to ascertain the technical abilities of prospective hires. “Just get me a guild member!” Now you can interview on other qualities...

I think most (but not all) fields would find a traditional union too limiting and frustrating these days, not to mention the issues with corruption they are plagued with in the US. A flexible and modern hybrid with a guild type system, more like a framework than a prescriptive structure, could get a lot of people on board.

Sysadmins have guild-style organizations (see: USENIX, LOPSA) but they've not had as much impact on hiring and income as would like to be believed. If anything, they've served as a filter for HR, who immediately tried to weaponize it.

I'm not saying a traditional union is the Way, but tech workers as a whole are severely lacking a cohesive voice, any voice. The egregious hiring practices, which have been turned into a game at the highest levels, are symptoms of this madness. When was the last time a doctor had to bring Frankenstein's monster back from the grave with no tools while blindfolded? In tech, that's a fairly typical interview question.

It shows in the amount of overwork-related discussions, shrugged off as part of being a highly-paid, salaried employee. All the while, sharing on LinkedIn this great new shiny your company's CEO really, really wants people to see.

A big chunk of bay area tech workers are on the H1B visa. If they get fired, they might have to go back to their home countries. They simply cannot take the risk of losing their job (almost a $100K downside) for the chance of 10% salary increase ($10K upside).