skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> should be able to find remote work that pays more than $60k/year.

Key word being "should". The "companies willing to take risks" from the OP don't accept remote people most of the time, and those who do allow remote frequently don't believe that people outside of SV are worthy of the payscales you see in SV (even after adjusting for the cost of living).

> asked questions about complexity classes at some point during the interview stage

Yeah, and I am reasonably certain that I passed 3 of the 4 for that class of question, but I had forgotten the minutiae of Dijkstra pathfinding algorithm. As a result, my response for the 4th was O(n^3), but it should have been O(n^2). At least I won't forget that one again.

It was pretty funny in one of the interviews, where we spent 50 minutes going over a logic puzzle (the kind where if you don't know the answer, it's unlikely you'll figure it out in an hour), they then went on to say how the job was about creating an interface between a DB and RabbitMQ, and creating a common application framework for the rest of the company. We ended up having a good (but short) conversation about how to do exactly that, and those 10 minutes seemed much more valuable than the time spent on a logic puzzle.

I think that's the big thing: the existing employees who are drafted to do candidate interviews were themselves interviewed with this style, so it's how they go about it. They simply haven't stopped to think about what biases these interviews introduce, or think those biases are a good thing.
Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Adsense? Responsive Ad Banners?
I am looking for a good ad platform that I can add to my site to generate revenue... My site is responsive so it would be good to find a network that offers responsive sized ad units...

Any ideas/suggestions?
Are you looking for a job? :)
IMHO it's not artificial intelligence it's just intelligent scripting. A real AI, like a human shouldn't be programmed for something specific but adapt itself to what it encounters.
>
Disclaimer: I'm living in Germany and nearly exclusively interviewed in Germany so far. There's nothing comparable to the top US schools here, so school reputation is probably much less important than in the US.

There is something comparable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studienstiftung: 'it is often referred to as "Germany's secret elite university"'.
The Deep History of Your Apps: Steve Jobs, NeXTSTEP, and Early OO Programming
I thought my comment amounted to more than "trust us." Development is less centralized, since Ethereum is defined by a spec and there are seven independent implementations, and proof of stake aligns incentives better than mining.

But I'd only claim it's more resistant, not immune.
>>let's remember that this kind of hidden economy has a huge cost for society and it's very widespread in southern Europe.

Any where, where there are cash transactions this is an issue. In India, apart from salaried people taxed at source almost anybody else rarely if ever pays taxes. Its assumed taxes are only what stupid people pay.

And since they make up for a huge vote bank, any move to introduce reforms for cashless payments are resisted. Plus contribution to political parties happens in cash so politicians themselves don't want it.

This leads to a situation where the tax burden is expected to be endlessly on the salaried middle class and they are expected to pay up unfairly all the time.

Privacy aside, the true reason is people just don't want to pay taxes.
Was the project based off of something you did with your employer? I don't know why this thread is so angry, when this could have been a user error.

Everyone should put down their pitchforks till we get more information. This is something HN REALLY needs to work on imo.
Mainly in that you can customize the pattern. As far as I know the fridge magnets are a series of N/S stripes that are made by driving a long coil with AC and running the film past it at a speed tied to the mains frequency.
Joining a startup in what capacity? Peanut salary + options is exactly what's being discussed here. OK salary/no options is not as common in the startup world. But then once you find that you are not a "suit" anymore (see parent comment to which I replied).
The point is, I can't fix the other 49 states with magical powers.
Lots of people here are talking about skewing search results, but it doesn't seem like we have any evidence Google did that. All the email says they did was create a tool to visualize data, and give it to the press.

The article linked talks about a few other things Google did, but the closest they get to manipulating search results is putting “Live! Secretary Kerry answers questions on Syria. Today via Hangout at 2pm ET.” on the homepage below the search box. A politically neutral statement advertising a unique source of (biased) information, and their own product. This is the moral equivalent of reddit advertising an AMA with Obama, or Elon Musk as far as I can see.
Chapter 151 – Career in Astrology – Part- 6 Explained for all ascendants
Yes, but the whole idea behind the worry that US infrastructure is falling apart is that the government has a role to fix it.

Obviously, with roads and bridges, it's the government's job to fix those, since those things are owned and operated by the government.

However, do you think that the government should be handing buckets of cash to Comcast so they can maintain their cable internet infrastructure?

Should the government fork over money to Verizon, AT&T, etc. to maintain cellular infrastructure?

Should the government hand money to CSX to maintain their railroads? (Over and above the money that Amtrak pays them to lease the track, that is.)

As for the mail, that's not privatized: the USPS is wholly-owned by the US federal government. But as I understand it, it's entirely self-funded. Unless you're talking about UPS/FedEx.

If the infrastructure is privately owned, why should the government use taxpayer money to maintain and upgrade it? That's the epitome of Mussolini-style fascism: the government working solely for the corporations and not the people. If the infrastructure is really that important, and the corporate owners aren't taking care of it, then it should just be nationalized.
Yes: like I said, the goal was to get results back to candidates faster.

The biggest complaint we'd been getting from candidates before work samples was that our process took too long. Our goal became to get the entire process done under two weeks (from its worst point, a month or two earlier, of 1.5 months, when someone finally posted an anonymous complaint to Glassdoor about us).

After iterating a couple times, we could reliably go from first contact to hire/no hire, with a motivated candidates (ie: one who would work with us to schedule the interview process aggressively) inside of a single week.

Also, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11328090

The process I'm advocating for is far better for candidates.
That doesn't sound like a straight up gamble. It is if you have no idea if your customers want to pay for your product but there are ways to remove this unknown i.e knowing that people are willing to pay before building anything that costs a significant amount.
Show HN: Python 3.5 Async Web Crawler Example
It flips a delete bit. But here's the bigger problem: your pages return a 404 error page with status code 200, so Google takes a long time to clear them from their cache (real 404s clear semi-instantly).
The Power of Arel
How many people use 555-areacode-1212 for loyalty card search at the cash register? It's an offline equivalent of bugmenot.
There will always be ways to evade taxes and the problem with Italy, Greece and other southern societies is not technical but a weak government which can't impose the already existing laws to their citizens, public workers and politicians themselves. Going cashless is not an excuse for an incompetent tax office and Ministry of Finance.
I've always curious about why the taxi differences between North America and the rest of the world. When I was younger in Asia, we had these "luxury" taxis that were still very reasonably price. I was appalled that taxi rates in North America were so high and the cars were just terrible.

Thanks for your clarification!
Hofstadter's Law
Similar for me, but I resisted using cards in real life from the beginning. I use them exclusively for internet transactions. I just don't like the idea of giving up a freedom of anonymity, yet I notice others are seemingly jumping at the chance.

I'm not sure what I would do if I lived in a city where electronic transactions are a requirement for public transport. I guess I would walk as much as possible... or even move to an alternative place.
Ironically, a work-sample test which WAS the same across every developer would be closer to an IQ test than if that work sample test were tailored to the role.

There's probably a solid argument for giving every candidate for the same role the same work sample test; otherwise you might naturally want to randomize some parameters or choose from a bank (if you think "cheating" is likely).
I once had an internal recruiter tell me during a phone screen that my resume was weak since I went to a no-name school in the south called Georgia Tech.

During my last interview round, another interviewer found it hard to believe that I did not use Twitter.

I think these problems existing more in the "trendy" areas such as the Bay area. Once you leave that culture, ignorant recruiters are still around, but the exclusivity is less.
Would you have any idea what the cost to build an E class might be? Just wondering how the various taxes around the world affect its affordability.
If the infrastructure is privately owned, I don't see how the government has any business worrying about it and certainly not paying for its maintenance and upkeep (beyond normal usage fees, just like any other customer).

If the infrastructure is critical to national security, it shouldn't be privately owned.
I am fine with asking for candidates to work as a 1099 for a month if you pay them the standard 1099 contractor rate, which is almost invariably more than 2x their FTE rate. I am not fine with the industry norm of paying people their eventual FTE salary on a 1099 basis; that's a scam.

I think it's pretty dumb to do that, though, because most software developers can't take a month off of work from their current job to see if they're a fit for your company, and none of them will put their health insurance in jeopardy to do that.

I also think it's pretty silly to design a process that deliberately demands a month of time to make a decision that could be made effectively in a week.
The creator (Dave Mathews) talking about it on ThisWeekInStartups (2011) https://youtu.be/Z8Tczfk1saQ?t=359
>convince them to build their next factory in China instead

No, the government doesn't do this, the shareholders do this (this includes the CEO). It's a huge red herring that delays automation from happening. Even China nowadays invests heavily into automation.

>At the basis, quite a bit of inequality is caused by the fact that some people happen to be smarter

Everytime I hear the word "talented", "bright" or "smart" on HN I don't even know what it's supposed to even mean anymore.

Somehow you deserve to be called a genius because mommy got you a contract with IBM and you decided to buy off an OS from some random guy for $50,000 and then made it run on IBM's computers.

There was also that guy who screwed over his cofounder with some social network.

Yeah sure they are now two of the richest humans on this planet but I don't think their success can be attributed to their "talent" alone. They very likely are not capable of pulling it off a second time.
At least with QR codes you don't need a special scanner, it doesn't need to be plugged into anything and you have the scanner (phone) with you all the time.

But I've never used one either.
The opening paragraph on the CEO's wikipedia page is a gem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wagner
There will always be ways to evade taxes, but the harder we make it the less tax evasion there will be.
>>I'm sure that isn't the only reason to Greece's problems but I bet it did have a huge impact.

These sort of problems run quite deep and have unintended consequences.

If money is not traceable, you also give way accountability. Opening up a door for corruption to happen easily, unchecked and unaccounted for. Rinse - Repeat for some time and you will see there are new problems due to corruption, which breed other new problems and so on..
Exactly the same thing happens in Greece. It used to be very common for shop-owners to "forget" to give you the receipt. After the crisis broke up though people are way more likely to ask for receipts as there are some incentives to do so (minor tax cuts for a specific amount of receipts etc.). Credit/debit card transactions have also tripled since 2008 or so which is good I guess. Things are different with doctors, lawyers etc. though, since virtually noone accepts cards and sometimes you might even need to argue with them to actually print you one. Thus you have some ridiculous incidents of doctors with apparent annual income of 9000 euros which is ridiculously low even for lower class standards. It's getting better, but it's a whole culture that needs to change for these incidents to cease. People using credit/debit cards is a step to the correct direction. In our case a cashless world might even be good.
I love that you can still download a 68K version!
While I agree that sounds like a plausible theory (and sort of reminds of the domestication theory... ie cute animals get more parental and human focus) but there are just too many animals that barely take care of their young that still sleep.... for example sharks sleep.
Ah I have been having Withdrawals from Japan, I need to get back there. This makes me oddly happy. Thanks!
github.com/micro/micro is this canonical import name? Serious Go projects usually have serious canonical import name. Examples,

- golang.org/x/net/html/charset

- google.golang.org/cloud

- camlistore.org/pkg/app

- willnorris.com/go/imageproxy
Honest question: do you have these running on a second (3rd?) monitor when coding? Or in a small window? Or where?
> cost for society

You meant "cost for government," right?

It sounds like the slice of society that gets the cash discount is benefiting greatly from this "hidden economy." Saving 50% on a venue is a big win for the newlywed's pocketbook, leaving more money in their pocket to buy goods for their new household.
I get the sentiment behind this, but bear in mind that interviewing is a two way street - and the company is often spending a lot more on it than you are (of course, they can better afford it).

That's worth possibly negotiating the amount of time or staging earlier parts with less impact.

I wouldn't say no to an interview that is going to burn a day, but I also wouldn't go to one without a pretty good feeling that I was likely to accept an offer if it came.

I mostly think of interviews as at least as much of a chance for me to evaluate them as the other way around (even the way they choose to interview tells me a lot).
How do you get your computer to solve the problem of "this text needs to be 2 points larger, a darker shade of red and 5 pixels to the right" without involving a programmer?

I've worked on the Avon AU website and we had a few hundred tasks like that. It's why (to link back to my current pet peeve) I'm upset that my relatives are unwilling to learn a tiny bit of web design because "it's too hard". There is a market for people who ONLY know how to do this. (There were two people in the company I was working for and my team only got access to them one hour every week - they were that busy.)
initially I would start with a static layout. I would want to optimize the css and what is actually used for both desktop and mobile. After that, I would convert the static layout to a dynamic template.
I hope that globalization isn't inconsistent with national autonomy, especially when it comes to taxation and social policy. If these two things are inconsistent, then globalization will lose out in the long run. That would be a shame, because liberalized borders and economies -- if properly regulated -- would benefit everyone.

> One possible result of such policy would be that both will turn out to be less interested.

Tax rates on the top 1% or 0.5% of earners could double over-night and those people would still have more than enough money to make their effort worth-while. We are literally talking about people who have more money than the can possibly spend on personal luxuries in their lifetime.

At some point far before the 1% mark, wealth accumulation becomes much more about personal power and legacy than anything else. These people continue working hard for the same reason that tenured professors continue to publish prolifically or retired people work hard on their lawns or hobby projects -- for love of the work, and/or because they literally don't know how not to work.

(Whether or not those people deserve to be taxed heavily is kind-of irrelevant to the fact that your hypothesis about human psychology is wrong.)

> You cannot turn the losers into winners

What is a loser? Most middle class people are of average or above-average intelligence and work hard. The only thing separating these people from e.g. Donald Trump is access to an inheritance or some other means of attaining large amounts of capital.

I'm willing to bet your average middle-class accountant or actuary would much rather (pay someone to) manage a portfolio of investments than crunch someone else's numbers.

Also, FYI, almost all computer programmers in the world -- including skilled ones -- are solidly ouside of 1% territory.

> but you can certainly alienate the surviving winners and convince them to build their next factory in China

So your argument for not redistributing some percentage of the wealth of billionaires is that they're petty assholes who will take their ball and go home? But isn't that what losers do? ;-)

As a matter of fact, globalization and national autonomy aren't inconsistent. Tax havens aren't a fact of life, they are an engineered reality created by lawyers and lobbyists.
Thanks for the suggestion. However, it is not my habit to listen to stuff with my phone. I have an iPod Nano that I use to listen to music and podcasts while running (much lighter as well as less breakable and stealable than a phone); and when not running, I'm at my computer with iTunes running. But clearly anyone's MMV.
> By storing your cash in a bank, you are exposed to both the bank's insolvency

Only for very large amounts, at least in Europe, the central bank insures your money from its own reserves in case of bank failure up to a certain amount, AFAIK typically in the hundreds of thousands of €/local equivalent.
All the best software engineers I know are over 50, and yet the young'uns who dominate the tech zeitgeist assume these same people are incompetent dinosaurs.

With age comes experience and also comes a strengthening of biases. Older people, so the stereotype goes, are inflexible and set in their ways, if very experienced in those ways.

It's not really paradoxical, it just depends on what tradeoffs you're willing to make as the person responsible for hiring, which depends on your line of business. There are few things more tiresome than someone making mistakes you already made two decades ago and tried to warn about, and the same applies to someone ignoring the new and improved ways to get things done just because they've always done it that way and know it the best.
That approach makes a lot of sense to me. If you can actually manage people, filtering for "not dumb" is usually sufficient to get the desired result.

Most companies demonstrate this with H1 contractor hiring. They usually don't bother with the cool kids club screening in those situations. One of the smartest people I ever worked with had a degree in Chemical Engineering from some mid-tier university in India that I never heard of. That guy would never get hired as a FTE at that company, because he didn't drink and didn't have the cultural "fit" nonsense.
If they were trying to change their ways, explain forcing Win 10 down everyone's throats except those who actively opt-out via registry setting.

They need to walk the walk, which they're not doing. :(
I'm a little worried that the AI will quickly develop a simple early game strategy where it sacrifices economy for early units (an "all-in") that never loses because of its perfect unit control.

The AIs unit control speed may have to be limited to get interesting results where it has to use strategy.
Lots do.

We lose the ability to look at our work objectively after spending a long time struggling with it, if you can put your writing aside for a period of time (some people say a few days others a week) stuff that you thought looked like dreck can turn out to be promising or occasionally perfect.
Both known as "the bogeyman" in the UK and being used as an argument as to why we should leave the EU, by both politicians and press, which many appear to have already bought.

The mind boggles.
Short discussion, 7 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=720435
Does the government not prosecute obvious cases of tax evasion (9000 euros example)? That's what would likely happen in the U.S.
True. If you don't believe the government has any role to play in, say, paving roads, maintaining bridges, etc, then there's no "cost for society".

Well, until the bridges start falling down, anyway...
What if I need to do this programmatically?
No, you can't - Earnshaw's theorem
There's a big difference between "a little impedance" and "risks human life". War waged with robots will still cost money.

If politicians make bad decisions, perhaps you should try fixing that instead of sacrificing the lives of young men for a small chance of making those decisions more painful.
> Here in Italy the big issue is that many business will just not declare cash transactions. It's pretty common not to be given a receipt when buying a coffee and often when you visit a doctor they'll say: do you want the invoice or a discount?

1) Require receipts for all transactions.

2) Offer 10% of recovered cash for anyone you report who doesn't follow #1. Add the penalty on top of any recovery [e.g. Current Fines + 10%]

3) https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/cashchapter4_210632.pdf

4) Taiwan-style receipt lottery [ http://www.tealit.com/article_categories.php?section=living&... ]
Ask HN: Best example of a written guide on website?
What is you favorite example of a written guide on a blog or website?
Agreed. It creeps up on you too. Always be looking for the next great learning opportunity.
If you're an accredited investor in the US, you could consider investing in a number of cannabis-focused hedge funds, private equity funds, and venture capital funds that have sprung up recently.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/debraborchardt/2015/05/19/cannab...

http://poseidonassetmanagement.com/

http://www.privateerholdings.com/about/
Thank you. That is the _second_ item in the DuckDuckGo search results. Guess I should have looked a millisecond longer. But why the one.npr.org does not at least have an "about" link to it...
I remember when these first came out. There was a lively small hacker scene around these, with people "declawing" them so they could be used as regular keyboard wedge barcode scanners. When Digital Convergence folded, I got my buddy at Radio Shack to hold aside a bunch for me that were never distributed. So I had a box of like 15 of these things. I think I still do somewhere.

Around 2004 I was helping out with a first-year science fiction convention and we needed barcode scanners for the art show and convention store but couldn't afford to buy really nice ones on a shoestring budget. So we used CueCats. They're slow compared to the nicer flash scanners, but worked pretty well. :)

Every time I see a QR code, I think of CueCats and wonder if anyone actually scans them. Seems like that "fad" has started to fade recently.
Paris terrorists used burner phones, not encryption, to evade detection