skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Because I don't want to hunt around for which of 10,000 buttons to press when I can just type what I want.
That's a very uninteresting and unscientific definition of truth. But even less interesting is arguing over definitions.

As a scientific person, I'm only concerned with truth that derives directly from observation. "True but not demonstrable" is an oxymoron.
"the reality is these tools work just fine. There's never been a reason to evolve them."

On the contrary; there have been many valid reasons to evolve them, but backward compatibility was deemed more important.

Example #1: it is possible to write a sh/csh/bash/?sh script that handles file names with spaces, slashes, quotes, question marks, etc, but one would hope that would be made a bit easier, almost half a century later.

Example #2: the hack that is xargs for handling large numbers of arguments. To write a truly robust script that handles directories with an arbitrary number of files, one should run a pipeline using find and xargs, instructing xargs to do the actual work (and you cannot even use find and xargs with their default settings; you need -print0 and -0 flags to handle file names with spaces, etc)

If programs received arguments unexpanded, and the system had a library for expanding arguments, many use cases would become a lot simpler, and scripts could become more robust.

And yes, that could have been evolved. Headers of executables could easily contain a bit indicating "I'll handle wild-card expansion myself".

Example #3: man pages, IMO, should be stored in a special section inside binaries. That ensures that the man page you read is the man page for the executable you have.

Example #4: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/24182/how-to-get-the... shows that things _have_ evolved. Reading and parsing /etc/mtab isn't a reliable way to find all mount points, just as reading /etc/passwd file isn't the way to find password hashes anymore, ar has long been upgraded to support file names longer than 14 characters, and zip knows more file attributes than it used to.
Micropayments for Decentralized Currencies [pdf]
From what I've read, zenefits is just outsourcing hr for efficiency and abstracting away complexity.

They may be shady as f* but I can wrap my head around them so they don't puzzle me.
I believe you're getting downvoted because the inconsistency in your logic has been pointed out, yet you're persisting with the argument.
I get a lot of recruiter and founder interest but I often do not make it past an HR screener's eye into a candidate pool due to lack of degree.

If I can bypass that step and talk to a dev or experienced manager I get at least one interview every time. For companies using software like Greenhouse in their recruiting pipeline, I _never_ make it through to even a phone screen without an internal shove by someone.

Almost everywhere I've ever worked, I've been considered a strong hire. Mid-level dev.
Perl 6: Binding to C++ with NativeCall
Once I can have the Arch/AUR repos in Windows, it will no longer be my year of Linux on the desktop. Watching eagerly, but not sold yet.
Which is arbitrary and meaningless.

Have fun with your waste of a mind.
Yep if you aren't looking at eBPF now you probably aren't doing it right. And BTW thanks for that Brendan.
Angular 1 to Angular 2 Services: The Basics
Pivothead – A Transformative Wearable Communications Platform
I have a degree in Mechanical Engineering and am self-taught programmer from an early age. No one has ever balked at hiring me for a software position without a CompSci degree. (at least not that I know of; I've never been unemployed for longer than a Saturday and Sunday between jobs)
Quora acquires Parlio
This reminds me strongly of "agents" that were going to do your bidding, as prophesied in the early 90's. Here's video of Douglas Adams and Tim Baker giving a tour of the future. https://youtube.com/watch?v=1iAJPoc23-M
This is what I don't get about this whole argument...

We can either standardize some of the interfaces and bolt the DRM on there, or we can standardize nothing and everyone will do whatever the hell they want because there's too much money riding on DRM being implemented for it to just disappear.

I fail to see how standardizing part of the solution instead of none of the solution creates a less interoperable/palatable system.
Articles like this throw fuel onto those suffering from imposter syndrome
I've taken a different approach to explaining the basics of application security.

These are the things that are most likely to cause your application to be secure:

1. Data being treated as code.
2. Invalid (or missing) logic.
3. Insecure operating environment. (e.g. outdated packages)
4. Cryptography failures.

Data being treated as code covers the obvious things like SQL Injection and Cross-Site Scripting, and makes it easier to conceptualize the solution: Never mix the two. That's what prepared statements accomplish.

Invalid/missing logic is the realm of "missing access controls" and "confused deputy" problems. (This is also where I'd place CSRF vulnerabilities.)

Insecure operating environment: A secure application on an insecure server is not secure. Patch your systems. Use HTTPS. WordPress can't save you from CVE-2012-1823. Apache can't save you from Shellshock.

Cryptography failures are their own category, where the phrase "padding oracle" is routinely uttered with a straight face, a single mistake can cripple your application, and comparing strings the normal way programmers compare strings is considered dangerous. The solution here for people who aren't interested in becoming an expert is to hire one. Or a team of them.

These descriptions are an attempt to address the fundamental problems with how insecure code is written, rather than to arm the reader with a checklist of specific instances of vulnerabilities they can check off.

I generally dislike checklists (OWASP 10, SANS 25).

How many people are well-armed against SQL Injection, but pass user data to PHP's unserialize() function with reckless abandon? This is a data-as-code issue.

How many people use str_shuffle() for password reset token generation? This is a cryptographic failure.

I wrote about this at length here: https://paragonie.com/blog/2015/08/gentle-introduction-appli...

If anyone's interested, I also curate this reading list on Github: https://github.com/paragonie/awesome-appsec
There is only one way to toughen up: Practice. Be it interviews or sports. Be it negotiations or cooking. Practice and practice perfectly.

1. Take mock interviews from experienced engineers

Go one topic at a time e.g. Recursion or Trees or DP or Multithreading etc. Before you walk into the interview, practice well. Do at least 20 problems on that topic, if not more.

2. Do practice interviews at companies you don't want to work for

Don't feel an imposter in doing this. Realize that companies also go thru several candidates before they pick one. They are normal people like you, they have a learning curve to fill the position, and so do you. Finding the right company, at the right stage of your life, is not a trivial thing to do; it's a project and needs to be managed like that.

Going thru various interviews hardens your skills of negotiation, your understanding of business models, and more importantly, gives you clarity about what your strengths and limitations are.

3. Practice the right mindset

Never go to interviews with a loaded agony of getting a job. Go simply with the intent of solving interesting problems with interesting people ("to add life to your character"). Nobody explains this better than Bryan Cranston (possibly one of the most successful TV actors of recent times): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1WiCGq-PcY

I make these observations based on my experience running a successful bootcamp for interview prep (http://interviewkickstart.com) and also being an early engineer and a hiring manager (Director of engineering) at Box prior to that.

[Edit: specifically mentioned Bryan Cranston by name, based on the comment below]
Ya gotta melt the ice sheet so you can say there's no more fresh water. That way you can go from global climate change to global water shortage seamlessly. I'll bet we get a new Algore in a few years to scare us about fresh water. All so they can get votes.
I've seen zero evidence, even with the most extreme climate models, that human existance is threatened.

Saying stuff like that feeds right into the deniers.
> soliciting proofs of lower bounds on asymptotic complexity

A mathematical proof on the lower bound? is that a common request and something I should prepare for in an interview?
I heavily heavily avoid recent MBAs and really couldn't give two shits if you have a comp sci degree provided you're a good engineer and a good human.
0 sites with http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ (it blocks requests at OS level with /etc/hosts)
Why was the San Bernardino FBI/Apple thing not done via NSL?
I haven't needed a degree, in my 40 years of programming.
So fucking cool man, can I suck your cock?

Idiot.
Oh and environment variables... Will $HOME be defined, for example?
This is actually kind of a bad thing to do, since you're intentionally wasting other people's time.
If history continues with that kind of unexpected turns, we might end up on Microsoft/HURD ;)
I'd love to hear some of your reasoning, but my impression is that the writing has been on the wall for MBAs for 10+ years and that anyone with a recent MBA shifting into tech is someone looking for a buck but doesn't have a clue.
My heart skipped a beat when I saw that that ssh is going to be available. And tmux is being worked on!

But will I be able to change shells? Will I be able to put zsh with oh-my-zsh on it?
Right, I personally literally change my resume based on each application focusing on the experience which I think would be most relevant for each position. I also change the introduction sentence and when I respond to open ended questions (in the quizzes) I always refer back to the company and relevant examples. Cover letter, when requested, also takes me a lot of time to write up.
We looked at a degree as an indicator that this person can stick at something for 3-4 years.

For some jobs this was a good thing, for other jobs it didn't matter.

I've had jobs where my manager didn't have a CS degree, one of them I had to sit him down and explain why his ad-hoc database made out of .txt files and thousands of lines of C# code wasn't a good idea. A CS degree forces you to know about a broad range of ideas and tools (e.g. databases). This is useful. Employing someone with out that means they may have holes in their knowledge that you aren't expecting to be there. But give this person some motivation and a week and they'll get up to speed.
> My advice is go on interviews you don't even care about in hopes to get rejected.

This was an immense help when I recently decided to switch companies. I applied to places I didn't really want to work at so that I could either:

1. Get rejected and get used to hearing/reading those words while not taking it personally.

2. Work on my negotiation skills if I actually got an offer.

Either way it was a win-win for me in terms of what I was really trying to achieve.

You may come across a dream job posting one day and if you can block out the worry of rejection you'll have a higher chance of success.
This is a nice reinterpretation.
You're correct. The All Writs Act is only of use if there are no alternative remedies. The best way to think of the Act is as a catch-all. It gets used when other remedies aren't applicable or don't exist.
The forward slash (/) as a directory separator has always been acceptable to NT. One source says that it's been acceptable to DOS since DOS 2.0, although I don't have a lot of backing on that.

The only place that / as a directory separator doesn't work is when interpreted by cmd, as it's then ambiguous with DOS-style switches. And even then, modern cmd tries to understand / properly when possible. Most of the time it works as long as it is not the first character of a path (which you would not frequently see in Windows anyway), as there's then no way to tell it apart from a switch with a long name.

The canonical representation of paths in Windows uses a backslash, but 95% of the time the slashes are interchangeable.
Just because a job ad asks for a degree doesn't mean the person hired actually has one.
The Joy of Internal Tools
Trump said some stuff today
How many Valley startups are doing Computer Science!?

..or even Software Engineering!
Zeal – offline documentation browser inspired by Dash
"pre-mine" is a 2013 term. The correct term now, is "ICO" Initial Coin Offering. What you are suggesting is that the core devs were greedy in their setup of the coin. This is far from the truth and you can read online all about how the Ethereum crowd sale (ICO) took place. It was regarded at the time to be the #2 largest crowd sale in the world, raising some $18 Million dollars. The most impressive thing is that the Ethereum leaders have been extremely transparent from even before the crowd sale launch. Some investors ended up with even more coins than the founder of Ethereum as a result of the crowd sale, and there were upwards of an estimated 9,000 investors.

With that said, it is true that Ethereum doesn't advertise itself as a crypto currency, but I wouldn't be surprised if a few years down the road it will be worth more than bitcoin, or that Ethers (the coins) are used as crypto currency.
The article refers to people with no degree.
This was my bootstrapping process: Got a tech-support job at a software company. During my first week, wrote a company-themed screensaver. Showed it to the CEO. Became a developer later that day.
So, I'm a college dropout, and for me not having a degree was an issue until I hit the 10-15 years of experience mark and was up for executive positions. Then not only was it not an issue, no one ever asked.
Using a coding test as the initial barrier to even a phone screen is what I have a severe problem with.

I think coding tests absolutely have their place - after a 30m high-level skillcheck over the phone, let's ask for a brief 30-45m timed code challenge to rule out the applicants who were effective enough bullshitters to clear the phone screen.

But I too have seen this trend that GP calls out re: "auditions" to even make it into the actual audition process, and FWIW it has not hurt me one whit to spend the last few years refusing to complete a code challenge as a prerequisite to anything but an in-person technical interview.

The only way it would hurt you is if the company in question is one you know you want to work for - and I'd consider an up-front code challenge for a few big names out there - but in most cases I simply write back and let the recruiter know my policy.

It's not like they're going to stop sending you leads, if you're a good candidate.

edit: grammar
I had another skilled tech career with 15 years experience before switching to software and all of my employment has been in the 1-5 year range, more towards the latter.

Despite my lack of degree, I tend to be one of the more CS-oriented people on the teams I join. I put this upfront in my portfolio & github with the projects I show off, namely that I've written an ORM, a Web Server, games with AI using game trees and behavior trees, contributed to some popular OSS, etc...even some random odd stuff like emulators, disassembler scripts, pentest tools, etc.,

I guess I do have some gaps but I'm constantly trying to fill them and I'm not satisfied to rest on that knowledge.
Many, many startups use Amazon Mechanical Turk and/or CrowdFlower for this exact thing.

See http://blog.echen.me/2012/04/25/making-the-most-of-mechanica... for some examples.
bad build quality. also had issues with humming and generally falling apart in subtle ways while macbooks never do.
A Deep Dive into Simoorg, Our Open Source Failure Induction Framework [LinkedIn]
Once Microsoft stop charge users of Linux-based products for their patents or at least stop doing that shady way under NDA I'll believe it's not the same company.

So far they get better in communication with open source community, but their business practices are all the same and Windows 10 only prove it.
I don't have an engineering degree (I have a business degree) and never got rejected for this reason, even for junior position.
Interesting. What test do you propose to determine whether it is arbitrary and meaningless?
> I've seen people with PhDs from top schools who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag

A computer science PhD, in my humble opinion, does not teach how to program anymore then having PhD of Architecture teaches you how to build a residential home. If it did, there'd be much more time spent learning about tooling and practicing programming instead of reading papers and generating novel research.

If I were hiring C.S. PhD's, I would not be judging them on the quality of their code or proficiency in any particular language.
Adopting Swift  LinkedIn
[::-1] is an idiomatic way to reverse a string in Python that is the obvious way for a habitual user of the language to do it e.g.:

def palindrome(s):
return s == s[::-1]

It could be discussed whether ''.join(reversed(s)) is more readable for a novice programmer learning Python. In general, Python prefers words over punctuation.

Also, there are objects that can be reversed() that are not sequences.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/931092/reverse-a-string-i...
Companies interview multiple candidates looking for the best one, and they'll solicit applications from candidates that will never make it past a phone screen.

Why wouldn't you do the same with companies?
developers != mainstream

App-stores require critical mass of mainstream users which Windows still has more of beyond anyone else. Developers follow the masses, not the other way around.
I've never had an issue with amazon payments (mostly through humble bundle) and I always have third party cookies turned off.
Instead of toughening up, I'd suggest two things:

* Try to get ahead in your day job. This doesn't necessarily mean making the big bucks. It means being someone who deserves the big bucks. To find better work and more money you'll probably have to leave. Maybe not, but probably.

* Find new jobs through word of mouth, networking, etc. In my experience, this does not equal a slam dunk hire, but it'll get you an interview and they will actually converse with you. They want to find out why you were recommended, and that's a whole different feeling that being "screened".

Potential sources of recommendations and job leads include former coworkers (and bosses!), people you meet at user groups, interest groups, etc.
If the company looks like garbage though, why are you applying?
I have worked for more than one employer in Silicon Valley that expressly forbade me from considering candidates without bachelor degrees for my open reqs. This was over my objections, because I strongly believe a degree says nothing about a candidate's job skills.

One place even went so far as to limit the acceptable majors. CS and CE only, not even EE was acceptable. Nevermind that EE is often in the same department and some people may have gone to schools without dedicated CS programs. Exceptions could only be made if the candidate was a direct referral and that person really went to bat for you.

It's total nonsense. I have a CS degree myself and it hasn't informed my professional work at all. I don't find myself referring back to my databases coursework where we used a made-up non-SQL language or my operating systems class which was about punch cards and paper tape OSes (and this was in the early 2000's, not 1975!).
Best news coming from Microsoft. I had been struggled for a long time for being stuck in the windows OS on my working PC, hope it's going to be mature and stable ASAP
ssh is already available natively if you install msys git
A degree is very useful when trying to get your first job in the industry. It provides some comfort for the hiring company that you have some level of training and understanding. It makes you stand out from those without a degree that are also trying to get a start.

Once you have several years experience the degree becomes less important because you will be judged on your actual experience. An employers looks at the languages/platforms you have used and can then easily test you based on those.

After 5 or more years the degree is pretty much irrelevant. Especially when there is a shortage of talent.
The answer is Slack. Slack is booming and garnering a ton of investment. Slack has a good bot interface and a zillion integrations, which only adds to the value.

As for why Microsoft is jumping in now? They have a Slack clone in the works. This bot framework is just laying the groundwork for duplicating one of the core reasons for Slack's success.

As for the Turing test, no, none of these bots come close. The frameworks make it easy to match simple text commands, but that's about it.
Linux driver support for a lot of the surface hardware leaves much to be desired unless it's changed much since the last I looked.
a "renowned security researcher" or a "renowned academic cryptographer"?
>Where do you draw the line, is everybody legally obligated to comply with such demands?

If I have a warrent, I can force you to hand over all information allowed by the warrent. That's how warrents work.

They're able to get any data a judge agrees with.

I don't think they're able to compel labor.

>How about compelling every luckless individual who lives along the subject's morning commute to turn over all video and image files because it might help them in their investigation.

If a judge thinks there's probable cause, they can require this, so far as I know.

>You can't believe both of those, because compulsion eliminates choice.

They have the ability to compel Apple to hand over data. They don't have the ability to compel Apple to perform labor unrelated to producing data.

>No, they want on demand access - they don't care about any key.

The FBI explicitly asked for the key at one point in the case.

Could you explain how your commerce example is in any way precedent?
So I'm going to ask you a basic question: do you believe there is no correlation, a positive correlation, or a negative correlation, between a candidate having a degree from a good quality institution (I'm deliberately ruling out degree mills) and candidate quality?

That is the only question worth asking.

The rest of your post is just useless anecdote. Yeah of course there's candidates with degrees that suck, and candidates without degrees that are amazing. You've said basically nothing of substance by pointing that out.

What are the averages? It I'm sifting through dozens of resumes for an initial cull, guess what? I'm using heuristics. "Has a degree" is one (of many) of them.
Leaders often characterized as assholes dominate the headlines: Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Travis Kalanick, the list goes on and on.

He is basing the article on his personal example. Is he saying that he is more successful as a CEO than above-listed people?
Proof?

I absolutely believe this to be true, but we cant say it is true without evidence

EDIT: As pointed out below by kazinator, I suspect this to be true, I do not believe this to be true.
This is true, and the unfortunate effect of treating all software engineers as equal. However, if PhDs are not expected to write code, don't call them software engineers, call them "researchers".
But look at it from the company's point of view - why would they invest time in a 30-minute skill check interview for every applicant if they can just as easily run the code challenge up front and eliminate a large proportion of the unsuitable applicants?