MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How to prepare for full stack interviews
by fhak | 2025-08-15 06:20:38+00:00
I’m interviewing for a new job and applying to SWE roles, some say they are full stack, some say they are more backend than frontend, etc…

I have not felt prepared for any interview I’ve done because the variance of questions I get asked is just all over the place. Sometimes it’s a really specific React question or problem to solve, sometimes it’s doing more of a system design question where I have to go pretty deep into how something like Kafka works, other times it’s just a LC hard problem. I just don’t ever feel like I can prepare enough to really ace the interview because the breadth of what I can be asked is just enormous. I don’t do poorly when answering these questions but I don’t do exceedingly well enough to confidently pass.

I also feel like this is partially my fault for not specializing more in an area. A lot of the questions I get asked seem to be geared towards someone who specializes in one thing or another and because I’m more of a generalist I don’t know the answer to the same amount of depth that someone does who has just been focusing on an area more.

Do I just pick a direction either frontend or backend and learn to be really good at this instead of trying to continue to do everything? A lot of the roles I have interviewed for have just been normal SWE roles though and I still get wildly different interview formats and questions
by koiueo | 2025-08-15 06:20:53+00:00
I have home key on my external keyboard. While home in combination with any modifiers behaves consistently under Linux, it's an utter mess under macOS. Sometimes my cursor jumps to the beginning of the visual line, other times to the nearest \n before the cursor, sometimes when no text editing is involved, it scrolls the frame, other times it does nothing.

First time I tried macOS I was impressed with the globally (so I thought) respected emacs bindings (^E, ^A, and especially ^N and ^P). But then I have painfully discovered that almost every(?) app just mimics the default scheme, but essentially implements its own handling, which leads to numerous inconsistencies spreading way beyond copy/paste. That's when I realized why most macOS users I've observed use touchpad to manipulate cursor during text editing – there's no reliable universally consistent way of doing this under macOS

macOS is not just "not ideal". It's as messy as other OSes, but with its own bag of unique warts.

But I understand it's easy to ignore them once you get used to them.
by jama211 | 2025-08-15 06:20:58+00:00
Don’t put words in my mouth, I didn’t say that, and no goalposts have been moved. You don’t understand how tiny this model is or what it’s built for. Don’t you get it? This model PHYSICALLY COULDN’T be this small and also have decent interactions on topics outside its specialty. It’s like you’re criticising a go kart for its lack of luggage carrying capacity. It’s simply not what it’s built for, you’re just defensive because you know deep down you don’t understand this deeply, which you reveal again and again at every turn. It’s ok to accept the responses of people in this thread who are trying to lead you to the truth of this matter.
by alkonaut | 2025-08-15 06:21:10+00:00
I think the key thing it misses though (usually) is that you usually have to go grab things. I'm not willing to go download something in order to view it. Not even spending a few minutes time grabbing a whole season of a series and then storing it somewhere, even if viewing it takes many hours.

Spotify's convenience killed the mp3, and Netflix is hyper convenient compared to most piracy. No one (to a rounding error, but let's say no one) is _really_ interested in file organizing, bitrates, buffering, whether a show disappears in 5 years etc. Everyone (again, to a rounding error) just wants to watch that latest season of that latest show and then forget it.

What's now making old-school piracy return is that while Netflix is convenient, having 7 streaming services is really _inconvenient_. Not to mention expensive. But the inconvenience is horrible.

I wish just 1-3 of the large streaming services would cooperate on some standard which lets me see and manage all my content in one place. Then devices could natively support browsing that "rss for streaming" instead of having N different services. Once a few do, the pressure on others to join the standard would increase.
by mcdeltat | 2025-08-15 06:22:26+00:00
My point was at some point maximising screen size is less important than other usability factors. For phone definitely I do not want screen near the edge because fingers are there. For laptop, true, it's less of an issue. Although while opening my macbook my finger is about 1mm from touching the screen.

And the other comment about wasting screen space is funny. Yeah we need 1mm of extra phone screen space when 60% of most webpages are covered with ads (separate problem but still amusing in combination).
by Jetwu | 2025-08-15 06:22:27+00:00
Thanks for the comment! Do you mind linking the site - would love to check it out! That's a very fair point about the technical error aspect. Though with all the confounding variables (author skill differences, model selection based on price/speed, etc.) I'd say it's probably the most mature signal we have right now, but still far from ideal.

Really interested in what you've been working on for the past year! Are you doing custom fine-tuning or more on the prompting/post-processing side? Also I definitely need to check out the Midjourney onboarding, it sounds super interesting for inspo regarding your point about personalization + taste!
by tzs | 2025-08-15 06:23:32+00:00
> Stealing is when you take something from him, and he no longer has the thing you took.

People commonly use "steal" to refer to someone making a copy of data they are not authorized to have. Even you have used it that way: "I know my credit card company allows me to set a password to prevent unauthorized access from someone who might have stolen this kind of data" [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9001873
by tenscores | 2025-08-15 06:24:00+00:00
Those are great examples. I understand what you mean a bit better. And don't worry, I won't change my entire writing style based one person's opinion, but I can improve it where it makes sense for me. The reason I write this way is from my personal belief that most people don't read paragraphs (myself included) and so I sprinkle in short lines to break the flow (because those are the ones I would read first).
by nelox | 2025-08-15 06:24:43+00:00
I’m not downvoting you, that would be someone else.

Protests outside a broadcaster do not prove that a ban occurred. People protest over editorial decisions, framing, or lack of coverage without there being an actual prohibition. Without a formal statement from the BBC or credible reporting confirming a ban, the claim remains unsubstantiated.

The rest of the comment mixes admitted hyperbole with serious accusations that are either unverified or based on partisan sources. The destruction of “clearly labelled” hospitals and aid facilities has been reported, but such claims require independent investigation to determine context — including whether the sites were being used for military purposes, which changes their legal status under the laws of armed conflict. The figure of “more than 13 hospitals” destroyed is meaningless without distinguishing between those damaged, rendered inoperable, or completely demolished.

Allegations of executions, beatings, or denial of treatment are grave, but they must be supported by verifiable evidence from credible investigators, not presented as conclusive fact. Calling such events “not misidentification” assumes intent without proof. Assertions about “manufacturing evidence” are also speculation unless backed by concrete documentation.

Emotive claims without substantiation do not replace the need for clear, verifiable facts when discussing events of this seriousness.
by theshackleford | 2025-08-15 06:25:18+00:00
> it was originally “You wouldn’t steal a car”, which I’d argue is true for most people.

Sure, but it's only true if you stretch the definition of what's occuring. If we stretched it in the other way, in that "stealing" a car in fact left the perfectly fine original right where you found it, the vast majority wouldnt think twice.
by doix | 2025-08-15 06:25:59+00:00
I have the exact opposite problem on a Mac. Things don't just work. You can select text in the terminal and then middle click to paste it. But that only works in the terminal, not anywhere else.

Catches me out a bunch. There is also only a single copy buffer, so to copy from the terminal and paste into a browser I need to replace what was in my clipboard, drives me insane.

> Which I would've really expected more Linux users would value more than they seem to.

Because you get used to it and then don't think about it. I value having two copy buffers over consistency for the sake of consistency.
by medhir | 2025-08-15 06:27:21+00:00
> Thanks to large AI models, we’re now on the cusp of user interfaces built from simple prompts.

Idk. If this were true I feel like we’d be seeing the implosion of a lot of companies’ valuations. This statement of “we’re on the cusp” keeps being presented uncritically, as if the progress in LLMs hasn’t completely plateaued over the past year.

I don’t think we’re anywhere close to replacing real humans with brains. If anything, it’s becoming clearer by the day that LLMs are not doing anything like the abstract symbolic reasoning needed to build true quality software.
by audiodude | 2025-08-15 06:28:27+00:00
While we're talking keyboards, what about emoji? Every messaging app has a different interface for them, some like Discord and Whatsapp allow you to use :smile: shortcuts, but the enumerated names are different across apps. I've occasionally gotten a dedicated OS emoji picker to show up on my Mac, but I don't know how.

On Ubuntu Cinnamon, I managed to create keyboard shortcuts for the 8 or so emoji I use the most by binding something called a "compose" key and modifying a .XCompose file, but it still took other config file gymnastics to make it persist between X sessions.
by gwerbret | 2025-08-15 06:28:30+00:00
By the tenor of your response, I assume you understood what I meant in this very-non-medical of forums, which means you understood why the paper's authors themselves chose not to call their study a trial (even though they registered it as a "clinical trial", as is necessary for any clinical study in humans involving a treatment intervention). Which leaves me wondering about the purpose of your response.
by forgotoldacc | 2025-08-15 06:30:10+00:00
During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the US defined insurgents as any male of fighting age. And that wasn't even 18. Most people being dropped very much were not soldiers and it became incredible apparent when several weddings were bombed because maybe one person in attendance might've once talked to a person who knew a guy who was familiar with a guy who might've known a guy who was a guy who said he supported the war against America. "Hamas operatives" is very much the same thing, unless evidence of their membership with Hamas is provided. And I'll change my mind if a list of 21000 verified hamas fighters is provided.
by weinzierl | 2025-08-15 06:30:18+00:00
I think Apple did the right thing by keeping GUI shortcuts separate from terminal control codes.

I never understood why the Linux GUI world ran blindly after Windows and emulated every pattern, good or bad. And yes, I know that Ctrl-C/Ctrl-P for Copy/Paste are much older and came out of IBM's CUA and SAA initiatives. What matters is that with the Mac we had a clear role model how to handle this aspect of GUI cleanly but me missed it.

While we’re at it, I’m still on the lookout for IBM’s original SAA and CUA documentation. If anyone has these lying around, I’d be interested
by vkou | 2025-08-15 06:31:02+00:00
> I never really understood why protecting Massimo in this situation was more important than allowing customers to access a feature in their watch.

By that same logic, my landlord's interests and ownership of his property are categorically less important than allowing his tenants access to their apartments.

Which is, like, a way to structure a society, but is not the way that American society is structured.
by bayindirh | 2025-08-15 06:31:02+00:00
As our resident GPL expert, you're right, but the reality differs a bit, with all the respect.

Companies doesn't like GPL because it mandates them to show hang their laundry outside. In turn, this creates a code quality pressure which companies doesn't want to pay for. Also, this visibility creates another, more psychological pressure on companies by exposing the external stuff they are using.

As a result, companies become more vulnerable to external pressure since somebody can point out what they are using without supporting and calling them out on it.

This can potentially send more money to developers, but this will not create value for the shareholders. Because having another yacht is more important than a pesky person's mental health and living conditions.
by bubblyworld | 2025-08-15 06:31:37+00:00
I think the argument here is nonsense. LLMs clearly work differently to human cognition, so pointing out a difference between how LLMs and humans approach a problem and calling that the reason that they can't build software makes no sense. Plausibly there are many ways to build software that don't make sense to a human.

That said, I agree with the conclusion. They do seem to be missing coherent models of what they work on - perhaps part of the reason they do so poorly on benchmarks like ARC, which are designed to elicit that kind of skill?
by dmazin | 2025-08-15 06:31:38+00:00
As much I loved this show growing up, an interesting thing about South Park is that they essentially defined the alt right (in the sense of a disenfranchised young man, often lashing out at marginalized groups and political correctness etc). Am I wrong or did there use to be an article called “South Park conservative” that basically described what eventually became “alt-right”?

Edit: found it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_Republican
by jibal | 2025-08-15 06:31:42+00:00
It's not "morally repugnant" to tell the truth; that charge is what's morally repugnant.

From ChatGPT:

"it’s widely believed by medical experts that Steve Jobs might have had a better chance of survival if he had pursued standard medical treatment sooner.

Jobs was diagnosed in 2003 with a rare type of pancreatic cancer — a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (pNET) — which typically grows much more slowly than the common and far more lethal pancreatic adenocarcinoma. When caught early, pNETs can often be treated successfully with surgery and other conventional therapies.

Instead, Jobs initially delayed surgery for about nine months while trying alternative diets and other non-standard approaches. By the time he agreed to surgery in 2004, the disease had progressed, and although he lived for several more years, the delay may have reduced his overall odds."
by scheeseman486 | 2025-08-15 06:31:55+00:00
The PAL release was an NTSC>PAL conversion, so throw upscaling artifacts onto the pile as well. e: Actually thinking back on it, it may not even have been PAL at all, but 480i/60hz Region 2/4.

There's a good chance you watched it on a CRT given that even on a flat panel LCD fom the late 2000s the low vertical resolution was quite noticeable (effectively ~272p, not counting deinterlacing artifacts from it being sourced from a video master). It looked somewhat acceptable in that context but aged very quickly once CRTs started becoming obsolete.
by broken_broken_ | 2025-08-15 06:32:00+00:00
I love a good SIMD article!

Just one point about testable assembly: I like the Golang guidelines which require to write a Go version before implementing the same in assembly. That way there is a baseline to compare with in terms of correctness and performance. Also the Go project has recently introduced mutation testing and test coverage on assembly code which is very interesting.

Finally about detecting at runtime the presence of simd: I am confused why a third-party dependency or even the std is needed. At least on x64, it’s just one instruction (“cpuid”) and then checking if a bit is set, right?
by koiueo | 2025-08-15 06:32:24+00:00
The last windows I used was XP. But accelerators do work in Linux.

And they are not just about menus: in any modal window I can do Alt+O for Ok. And this paradigm allows discoverability, I don't need to memorize shortcuts, I just hold Alt and look for underscored letters – that's how GUI should be IMO.

It's not perfect, and if I were designing UI from scratch, I'd made this feature modal instead of allocating entire physical key for that (like they do hints in vim-like browsers).
by motorest | 2025-08-15 06:34:45+00:00
> they have a branding problem - they are starting to being perceived like a snobby brand with ridiculously overpriced products sold as a status symbol - a Balanciaga of creative tech basically

I don't think your opinion is well grounded. Their whole product line, from the inception, was luxury high-end, sometimes gimmicky, media devices.

Why do you feel justified to tag the "hacker ethos" buzzword? Because some of their products sell as PCB-only/optional custom case format?
by bravetraveler | 2025-08-15 06:34:47+00:00
Truly upsetting that what was a joke is now my best plan: van, river.

Absolutely zero interest in sharing walls with people again... or participating in building the next Company City. Bidding against colleagues is enough to make the bosses laugh.

So, behave like a dragon. Hoard coins and, eventually/occasionally, fly. Maybe burn some stuff.
by Anamon | 2025-08-15 06:35:33+00:00
You conflate doing something with sharing it online. A lot of people do things for themselves, then they post about it and share it because they like the idea of someone else enjoying and getting something out of it. The thing LLMs might get them to stop doing is not the doing of the thing, but the sharing, to the detriment of everyone who actually would have liked to see it.

And no, people sticking to the LLM summary won't get the ideas I shared. They get a crappy, broken, incoherent, messed-up, bland, averaged version of it. Purified of all the personality, insight and thought it might have had in it. That's why people getting an LLM summary partially derived from their data will never seem like a suitable replacement to someone who does it not for the views or credits, but because they actually want to share something of themselves.

I do agree that the solution would best come from the demand site. People realising the inherent blandness and horseshitness of LLM replies, especially when compared to something written by an actual human with thought and intent, ditch the low-quality LLM turds and demand real content again. The problem I see right now is that pretty much everyone would prefer the human version to the slop, but the megacorps force-feed the slop and spend billions trying to make it as inconvenient as possible to interact with other humans.
by teo_zero | 2025-08-15 06:35:57+00:00
I don't get it. Isn't this exactly how the well-known formula is constructed? (With the example crafted to have integers, even solutions and a=1 so to conveniently hand-wave the last division.)

> Normally, when we do a factoring problem, we are trying to find two numbers that multiply to 12 and add to 8. Those two numbers are the solution to the quadratic, but it takes students a lot of time to solve for them, as they’re often using a guess-and-check approach.

Wait... don't students apply the closed-form formula? Do we teach them that maths is about guessing? Next what? that pi is a rational number equal to 22/7, maybe?
by righthand | 2025-08-15 06:38:01+00:00
You aren’t wrong that there is/was a group of people that consider themselves South Park Conservative but the creators reject the notion that South Park is specifically liberal or conservative, because their intent is to parody any people they can. The creators dislike political correctness but they also dislike the forceful nature of conservatives applying their beliefs on other people. Read the South Park wikipedia page, it explains it pretty well.

Insinuating that South Park conservatives evolved into the alt-right is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Trey and Matt didn’t invent disliking political correctness.
by anonymous_user9 | 2025-08-15 06:38:52+00:00
The perverse incentives of insurance companies and an equal if not greater factor than regulator burden.

Insurance companies are not incentivized to lower costs, because it allows them to charge more. Pharmacy Benefit Managers eliminate the price bargaining power of even the largest pharmacy chains. Healthcare is complex, expensive, and required for life, which make it inherently susceptible to market distortions.
by Semaphor | 2025-08-15 06:38:57+00:00
We use pdf.js, a bunch of problems I encountered when testing and comparing (17 MB, 158 pages, many images, Windows):

* Links don’t work

* Bookmarks show up but don’t work either

* Text selection doesn’t work in FF

* Middle-clicking (to scroll) in Chrome triggers text selection

* Very slow rendering, when I scroll in pdf.js, everything looks fine. When I scroll in this, everything looks low quality and blurry for ~500-1000ms. Worse for jumping multiple pages at once, e.g. using "end", I get a white page instead of a low quality page.

* Up/Down, Page Up/Down, Home/End don’t work in FF (left/right does work)
by patates | 2025-08-15 06:39:29+00:00
A comedy show is just a comedy show. We're all responsible for who we become. If some purposefully terrible animated pixels inspire me to be a disgusting person, that's on me. If I play a shooting game and end up hurting someone, that's on me too (or my parents, if I'm young!). And if I spend too much time on HN, thinking AI is garbage, and then lose my job because I fell behind, that's also on me! (As well as starting to write my own comedy here on HN, knowing exactly what I'm getting into!)
by magic_hamster | 2025-08-15 06:41:06+00:00
I'm not sure I've seen the sci-fi movie where Apple is heralded as the golden standard of key bindings, but having used Macs for a few years in real life, I can attest the key combinations are an absolute atrocity for the reasons you mentioned and then some.

While I grew to accept some advantages of my Mac can't be easily replicated in other platforms, I think it is severely lacking in basic features, user experience and it's still occasionally infuriating even in 2025.

I do have a very long list of Mac gripes, as is probably deductable from this comment.
by elefanten | 2025-08-15 06:41:26+00:00
I concur with this take. Like many facets of culture, some people/groups will project what they want onto a given cultural entity (South Park, in this case), but that doesn’t mean one should assume they speak for it.

For example, the “men’s rights activists” group appropriated the idea of “the red pill” from The Matrix. They certainly differ wildly in worldview from the Wachowski siblings.
by kgwgk | 2025-08-15 06:41:29+00:00
Most of the value is in the patents, not in the manufacturing. Did they also expatriate that “accidentally”?

If Pfizer operates in the US at a loss (or at least they did in 2018-2020) and all the profits are booked elsewhere it was their choice.

https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wyden_pfizer_in...
by crote | 2025-08-15 06:41:33+00:00
> Let me say first of all that the card networks do great work enabling commerce by being lightning-fast and generally secure.

A lot of that is smoke and mirrors. They give a very fast pinky promise of payment, but it usually takes several days to become irrevocable. Similarly, it has taken decades for them to implement any form of genuine security, and even today the main form of fraud protection is... simply having the merchant pay for it.

The most impressive part is how they managed to stay this popular, despite being built on fundamentally flawed concepts.