MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by SoftTalker | 2025-05-14 03:47:20+00:00
I read the Great Gatsby in high school. Or tried to. I may have resorted to Cliffs Notes. I can't even remember. I can't remember one thing about that novel, other than the title. The words crossed my retinas but made no impression beyond that. Just could not engage with it at all. And I liked reading, just not the stuff they assigned in English class.
by abhisek | 2025-05-14 03:47:32+00:00
Build in public really. Just talk about what we are building, get feedback, bug reports etc. from users. When major security issues happen related to our domain e.g. xz or tj-actions/changed-files, we either write about how our tool can mitigate the risk or research on how to enhance our tool to handle the risk and then talk about it publicly.
by exeldapp | 2025-05-14 03:49:48+00:00
Yes, software is full of ambiguities but there are methods we use to handle them. OP emailed an outline wanting feedback, as any team player would do to iron out ambiguities, and received a meaningless reply. I think it's safe to say companies don't want their engineers going into a corner never to be seen again for 2 weeks, which is what this interview process recreates.
by jandrewrogers | 2025-05-14 03:50:11+00:00
Anyone that works on e.g. database kernels that do direct DMA (i.e. all the high-performance ones) experiences this. The silicon doesn’t care about your programming language’s ownership model and will violate it at will. You can’t fix it in the language, you have to accept the behavior of the silicon. Lifetimes are intrinsically ambiguous because objects have neither a consistent nor persistent memory address, a pretty standard property in databases, and a mandatory property of large databases. Yes, you can kind of work around it in idiomatic Rust but performance will not be anything like comparable if you do. You have to embrace the nature of the thing.

The near impossibility of building a competitive high-performance I/O scheduler in safe Rust is almost a trope at this point in serious performance-engineering circles.

To be clear, C++ is not exactly comfortable with this either but it acknowledges that these cases exist and provides tools to manage it. Rust, not so much.
Ask HN: With LLM as companion, do you need a co-founder to launch a startup?
by nickevante | 2025-05-14 03:51:01+00:00
With LLM based coders like Claude, Zed or Cursor speeding up development, can solo founders realistically launch a tech startup without a co-founder? How do AI tools change the need for technical or non-technical co-founders? What roles are still critical to fill, and what’s been your experience building with LLMs?
by levocardia | 2025-05-14 03:52:26+00:00
Maybe I'm in the minority but I've generally had very good -- or at least, "good as I expected" -- experiences at AirBnbs, even recently. Sometimes I've stayed with rich friends who book nice places, and the experience is, as expected, very nice. Many other times I have stayed at bottom-of-the-barrel places, which were, as expected, bottom of the barrel flophouses. But tolerably so, and true to the advertisement (funny how they all have that exact same fake black leather futon though).

People say hotels are as cheap, but they never have the same amenities, and the location in town is often worse. An AirBnb with a kitchen is essentially $20-30 cheaper per day than a hotel without one. Add to that laundry, more privacy, and other perks and it's not really a fair comparison. It does seem like there are more hotel resellers and leasing companies using it as a stopgap between tenants, which I understand, but hate.

I get why they want to be an "everything app" (rich people have more money to spend on "experiences"), but other commenters are spot-on regarding the dangers of taking their eye off the ball. Seems like a better use of company attention would be to really boost and reward the genuine hosts that put their heart into it, and at least put in a modest amount of friction to slow down the corporate resellers with barebones apartments in half-remodeled buildings.
by legitster | 2025-05-14 03:52:32+00:00
Airbnb host here. A couple months ago we found a bug where Airbnb allowed two different guests to book the same night. Absolute madness ensued.

The worst part is we had their support on the line for hours. And he told that they didn't even have a way to escalate technical issues. His job was to stall on the phone and be yelled at until hosts gave up.

Unfortunately it's just the latest example of awful experiences with the company. As a host you are liable for everything. The only way to get them to hold up their end of the bargain is small claims court. They collect their fees for doing nearly nothing for either party.

You will not find a way to contact any individual at Airbnb. It's an impressively seamless anti-human design. They have built a wall and kicked down the ladder.
by cycomanic | 2025-05-14 03:52:41+00:00
Hah, my employer in Sweden recently started using one of these security training companies. They send you emails with some online courses you're supposed to do and then send occasionally phishing attempts etc. and when you fall for one they send you an email what you did wrong.

Out of interest I clicked on the link in one of their "phishing" emails and I was redirected to a link where they essentially told me "never click on links in emails, you never know where they lead to". One week later I get an email "please click on this link to complete the second part of your course". Obviously I never completed their course, they told me never to click on links.

What's even worse is that they don't even use their own domain for the courses, but some random looking domain.
by throw81398475 | 2025-05-14 03:54:19+00:00
I read so many responses (the replies here to this post and to so many other similar posts) of the form

"Oh, I simply refuse to do interviews [of format xyz]. It's just not worth my time..."

I feel like such a worthless piece of crap when I read these. I apply to hundreds of places, and when someone comes along that even wants to talk to me or a miracle happens and I get to any sort of technical round, I simply DON'T HAVE THE OPTION to be turning them away for any reason.

Like, these companies have all the leverage right now, and lots of us have none. Responses like "just tell them no" seem so tone deaf. I guess some of you must be seriously baller, but it seems otherworldly to me.

This is close to how I feel when I read posts on Linkedin "demanding" that companies dispense with some unethical hiring practice (e.g. keeping up job postings for which they are not hiring, rejecting candidates without feedback, endless interview rounds, etc). I'm like, "Dude! The people who are doing this do not give a rat's ass about your preachy Linkedin post. We have no leverage here. Spare me your clickbait."

End of rant.
by namuol | 2025-05-14 03:54:23+00:00
There _are_ more than two programming languages, though. I feel like most of the debates about Rust devolve into the same false choice between safety and ease.

Before Rust I was hearing the same argument from Haskell or Scala developers trying to justify their language of choice.

I know Rust is here to stay, but I think it’s mostly because it has a viable ecosystem and quality developer tools. Its popularity is _in spite of_ many of its language features that trade that extra 1% of safety for 90% extra learning curve.
by yonatan8070 | 2025-05-14 03:55:30+00:00
Microsoft has built Android app support into Windows, and phobe hardware is a lot more powerful than it used to be.

If they really try to make a convergent Windows phone, I think they could make it if they manage to integrate Android apps into the Windows mobile UI. However, we are talking about Microsoft, so I doubt they'd actually manage to do it.
by browningstreet | 2025-05-14 03:55:33+00:00
Third wave coffee roasters, like Revolution or Counter Culture, always taste distinctly sour. I can't drink those at all. I personally prefer medium to dark roasts.. even when I'm drinking them black.

I wish I could find the word that describes the lighter roast taste that I don't like (to me, it's the IPA of coffee) because I have yet to be able to walk into a coffee roaster and ask them, "Is your coffee <term of art>?" so I know not to even bother.
by mikepurvis | 2025-05-14 03:55:38+00:00
I went through this the first year that I did Advent of Code in rust, like okay I read in all the strings from the input file and now they're in a vector, so I'm going to iterate the vector and add references to those strings into this other structure, but of course they're still owned by the original vector, that's awkward. Oh wait I can iter_into and then I get owned objects and that ownership can be transferred to the other structure instead, but now I need them to also be keys in a map, do I use references for that too?

Cloning small objects is lightning fast, turns out in a lot of these cases it makes sense to just do the clone, especially when it's a first pass. The nice thing is that at least rust makes you explicitly clone() so you're aware when it's happening, vs other languages where it's easy to lose track of what is and isn't costing you memory. So you can see that it's happening, you can reason about it, and once the bones of the algorithm are in place, you can say "okay, yes, this is what should ultimately own this data, and here's the path it's going to take to get there, and these other usages will be references or clones.
by NIckGeek | 2025-05-14 03:55:40+00:00
Fil-C is impressive and neat, but it does add a runtime to enforce memory safety which has a (in most cases acceptable) cost. That's a reasonable strategy, Java and many other langs took this approach. In research, languages like Dala are applying this approach to safe concurrency.

Rust attempts to enforce its guarantees statically which has the advantage of no runtime overhead but the disadvantage of no runtime knowledge.
by rablackburn | 2025-05-14 03:56:31+00:00
>> ...if it's the sole feature its users would care about?

The tag-line covers it pretty well I thought?

"git-bug is a standalone, distributed, offline-first issue management tool that embeds issues, comments, and more as objects in a git repository (not files!), enabling you to push and pull them to one or more remotes."

That tells you what the feature is - if you need/want a more technical overview you can still get from the `README` to `entity data model` in two clicks (Documentation > Data model).
by theamk | 2025-05-14 03:57:16+00:00
Could one do a "terminal inspired, mutt-like email client" that completely satisfies OP's proposal (web-based, TEMPL, pocketbase, pulumi, etc...)? Sure, it would be possible. None of those are _required_ for the submission but you can totally use them if you wanted to. So the interviewer probably thought, "hey this person is going all out", and was absolutely honest in saying "Looking forward to receiving your submission"

I cannot really blame the interviewer for not reminding the candidate that they should actually follow the requirements, in addition to all the optional stuff they mentioned in their spec.
by graycat | 2025-05-14 03:57:41+00:00
Five rules:

(1) Financial Security.

Since tough to get financial security when have a boss, instead start a business, make it successful, and sell it. Usually at the beginning, tough to know if some business direction is good, and good/bad can change over time. So, keep in mind new directions.

The business should yield at least enough for a good family, a house for self and family in a good neighborhood, and significant savings.

(2) Health. Do well on diet and exercise. Don't smoke, drink, or take illegal drugs. Don't try to climb Mount Everest or anything similar.

(3) Family. Enabled by the other rules.

(4) Education. K-12, 4 year college, advanced degrees should yield good ability at selecting good from bad.

“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.“ – Mark Twain

Some of the good content may help with financial security. Friends made can be crucial for financial security and parts of family formation. Never stop learning and for much of education pick some good and relevant material and largely teach yourself. For your children, help them with their education.

(5) Socialization. Understand people and how to interact. So, special cases include friends, family, leadership, media, politics.

More is important, but these five 'rules' are a start.
by hnburnsy | 2025-05-14 03:57:44+00:00
A Quantitative Study of DEI Statements in American University Job Listings

>Job applicants should not be required as a condition of employment to profess their loyalty to partisan statements or beliefs. Yet universities that solicit statements of commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion from job applicants do precisely that.

...

>We have discovered that 86 out of the 98 American universities we investigated required diversity statements for at least some job positions.

https://www.nas.org/reports/ideological-insistence/full-repo...
by MeetingsBrowser | 2025-05-14 03:57:51+00:00
In other words, the author did a good job but failed because there was an implicit requirement to not try very hard.

> Part of the assignment is using judgment and working in ambiguity.

If trying to clarify requirements is not what they wanted here, they may as well ask candidates to pick a number between 1 and 10 and reject anyone who guesses wrong.

> overkill on the infra and polish

I know its an opinion, but hard disagree on both. Take home tests are intended to show off your ability. Without specific guidance, how can anyone guess how much showing off is expected?

Polish is only bad if it stops you from delivering. Rejecting something that was delivered for being "too polished" feels like you are saying someone did too good of a job.

---

In my opinion tests with vague requirements like this are more likely to be a different way of rejecting people who are not a "culture fit".
by edfletcher_t137 | 2025-05-14 03:58:29+00:00
Not what was expected of them. I included "minimum-viable" in my original reply for a specific reason: to counter OP's lament that they lost out to a simpler solution.

If you are asked to implement X and instead you take extra time and come back with X+Y+Z, what have you done? Wasted time e.g. money. Companies really hate wasting money.

So if in your candidate project you demonstrate a propensity for bike-shedding any task, that's gonna be a big red flag.
by IMTDb | 2025-05-14 03:58:45+00:00
> This is verifiable by observing and touching hair of other people's hair before and after shower, which eliminates the possibility of shampoo manufacturers secretly altering what you perceive with your fingers.

No; you would need to touch people hair after a shampoo shower and after a non shampoo shower to see the difference.

My very possibly wrong understanding is that plain water + the mechanical action of the water being sprayed on the hair + your hand scratching the scalp does a huge portion of the work. Shampoo itself does very little. So if you don’t have any at your disposal; just does “as if”; and for slightly longer and you will essentially be good to go.
by minikomi | 2025-05-14 03:59:25+00:00
It seems they wanted "keyboard driven", "fast/light", "quickly interactive"

The youtube video provided by the OP seems more "web-app", "click driven".

For contrast:

* The OP's submission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY1sVXMkP_o

* Someone interacting with aerc: https://youtu.be/kpAwwgnZUxg?t=308

* Someone interacting with mutt: https://youtu.be/C35NRp42bEQ
by ajross | 2025-05-14 04:01:12+00:00
> Cloning small objects is lightning fast

It's really not, it's the way python works. Heap allocations are "fast" on modern CPUs that are too fast to measure for most stuff, but they're much (much) slower than the function call and code you're going to use to operate on whatever the thing it was you cloned.

Code that needs memory safety and can handle performance requirements like this has many options for source language, almost none of which require blog posts to "flatten the learning curve".

(And to repeat: it's much slower than a GC which doesn't have to make the clone at all. Writing Rust that is "Slower Than Java" is IMHO completely missing the point. Java is boring as dirt, but super easy!)
by scarface_74 | 2025-05-14 04:01:47+00:00
Uber is a lot better than AirBnb. I use an app and the person picks me up and drops me off. If the driver cancels I automatically get another one scheduled, they don’t check my ratings or care if I have never used an Uber before, don’t have to worry about the Uber not picking me up because of the color of my skin.

The AirBnb may be illegal, there is no consistency with how you get in and you can’t even find out the address until after you reserve. Hidden fees, weird policies, you never know what you are going to get or have any recourse if they cancel on you
by edfletcher_t137 | 2025-05-14 04:01:57+00:00
OP didn't take into account the (great) asymmetry between themselves and the hiring manager, then built an entire lament on that. Dealing with this job req is likely just one of many day-to-day responsibilities the HM has and frankly I'm impressed they responded with three whole sentences. One method we can use to handle such ambiguity is to "make your best judgement" based on your skills, knowledge and experience (things that are tested for in the hiring process, incidentally), because often you may not get the answer you want or expect if any at all.
by alabastervlog | 2025-05-14 04:02:15+00:00
Hotels seem cheaper in some cities and if you’re solo or with only people who are ok sleeping in one small room with max 2 beds.

As soon as you go to two rooms, airbnb gets more appealing fast.

It’s also great where there are either no hotels, or the only options are motels, if you want somewhere with a kitchen and such.

Good for destination-type getaways where the point is to mostly hang out at the airbnb. Hotels suck for that. Even the nicer suite-type ones mostly do.
by sheepscreek | 2025-05-14 04:02:41+00:00
> I have been on the hiring end of take-homes multiple times and firmly believe that if you ask someone to do a take-home assignment you must follow up with a chat about the code.

That’s actually a very valid point. Take-home assignments not only require a significant amount of effort from the person administering them but also from the interviewer (or rather, the hiring team). After investing the time and effort in reviewing a project, it’s reasonable to expect feedback/a response back if requested.

However, we must also acknowledge certain realities. If there are 20 solid candidates for a single open position, many capable individuals will be rejected. This doesn’t imply that they were inadequate or even “failed.” It’s simply a reality of life.

Now to be asked to justify why a hiring manager picked A and not B, legally speaking, cannot be that I had to pick one out of the amazing candidates, so I picked one. The legally correct response (unfortunately) is to get nit picky and find faults where none really exists. At least, that has been my observation in how corporate America likes to operate. And last time I checked, Kagi is based out of Palo Alto.
by forthwall | 2025-05-14 04:03:03+00:00
Take home assignments I feel have the second worst signal for any hiring workflow (behind automated leetcode), you give someone free reign to spend too much time working on something useless without seeing how they actually think or approach problems, you only get a solution at the end, and the solution, especially in open ended problems like these has very loose objective measures. If you want a long term hiring process, I'd just stick to a contract project, though personally just do monitored interviews; I know it takes up more of the hiring managers time, but the amount of signal you get from actually talking and interfacing with a dev is pretty useful
by wkcheng | 2025-05-14 04:03:33+00:00
The attitude of the blog writer in their interactions also feels off. Just reading this blog post makes me think that this person is difficult to work with, requires extremely clear guidelines and instructions, and has a hard time making their own decisions. Maybe this is a good fit for a large, established company, but startups have their own needs.

"Create a terminal inspired email client so we can do an alpha test with some customers" is a reasonable ask for an engineer at an early stage startup. Of course, there would be a bit more specification, but a lot of the details would still be up to the engineer. This applicant wants more certainty than they can get.

This is illustrated by the line: "I would like to know what kind of response I could expect from Kagi if I drive it to completion." This is not a great request to make. There's no way they can answer that question, because there is no certainty available. They're probably getting a few hundred or a few thousand more submissions to evaluate.
by s1artibartfast | 2025-05-14 04:03:47+00:00
I would like a pony and a million dollars, but the real world is full of tradeoffs.

Vacation rental fulfil a niche that hotels do not, and I don't understand people who view them as substitutes. The fewer people use them the better. More for me and at better prices.

That said, Im probably not the median consumer. When I vacation, hotels cover almost none of my needs.

Im looking for a private beachfront Jacuzzi, hobbit hut in the forest, or someplace to party with family and kids.

I cant imagine using one as a hotel substitute.
by eru | 2025-05-14 04:04:49+00:00
> Having used the same device as my tablet/laptop/desktop for a few years (previously a couple of generations of Surface Book, now the Envy, in both cases with a dock set up on my desk), I never want to go back. It just makes using it so much smoother, even compared to having tab sync and what have you between multiple devices. It's not a money thing, it's a convenience thing, which is why I think it'll win out in the end.

Yes, that's useful. But eg ChromeOS already gives you most of that, and a bit of software could get you all the way there.

> I think as hardware continues to get thinner and lighter, the advantage of a tablet-only device compared to a tablet/laptop will disappear, and as touchscreens get cheaper, there'll be little point in laptop-only devices.

I agree with the latter, but not the former. There are mechanical limits to shrinking a keyboard, and still preserve comfort.

(And once you have the extra space from a keyboard, you might as well fill it up with more battery. But I'm not so sure about that compared to the argument about physical lower bounds on keyboard size.)
by parpfish | 2025-05-14 04:04:50+00:00
But why conflate “technical skill assessment” and “ambiguity handling” into one big stressful test?

Doing two small tests toy can measure each skill independently

A clear coding test to get technical skill and then some in person requirements gathering exercise or something to measure ambiguity handling.

You’ll get better insight into their abilities with less effort for the interviewee AND the interviewer (if the startup is really that chaotic, do you really think they are doing a careful code review on a zillion different bespoke takehomes?)
by namuol | 2025-05-14 04:05:07+00:00
Sure, C++ has a more complex spec, nobody can argue against that.

Complex is the wrong word. Baffling is a better word. Or counterintuitive, or cumbersome. If “easy enough for someone with experience in C++, OCaml, Haskell, and F#” were the same thing as “not hard” then I don’t think this debate would come up so frequently.