skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
But are architects supposed to write code? The example you give is embarrassingly simple and anyone should be (expected to be) able to write code for it. But aren't architects designing architecture. I don't think the architect or anyone in his team at my previous organization's IT dept could write code, but he could design system architecture.
It's possible her husband got railroaded, however it's also possible he did not. Impossible to tell from this tweetstorm.

First, being a disabled veteran does not preclude you from being laid off.

And as many others in this thread have pointed out, the "sign on bonus" she appears to reference apparently vests over 4 years, which is not that uncommon.

She says:

> "We’re shattered. Devasted. And fucking broke. @Tesla, shame on you. I know lay offs are a part of life, but you really took the low road and kicked your loyal employee in the balls when he was down."

Just to play Devil's Advocate for a minute, what if companies were prevented from firing or laying off employees because of the financial situation of the employee? Should the company be forced to keep paying redundant employees as some form of social justice or obligation?

Look -- this is not a judgment on her, her husband, or their family. Maybe what happened to this couple is a complete travesty, maybe Tesla is some horrible evil mega-corporation and they should feel ashamed over the situation.

However it's also possible her husband was in a department that was no longer needed or maybe even he underperformed his colleagues -- there's no way of knowing from this tweetstorm.

What I dislike is this presumption on HN that just because someone tweeted out his/her spouse got laid off by a tech giant that it's automatically some immediate miscarriage of justice.

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. There's no way of knowing from the evidence in front of us. I wish the mods of HN were more judicious in accepting these kind of one-sided screeds.
Yeah - that’s far from batteries included though, and comes with many limitations, especially for non-12-factor apps. It also doesn’t begin to answer questions about what that log store is, or how to alert on the contents of logs.
History of Knolling
Connotation. The glyphs themselves are mere shapes. We just come to associate certain styles with certain contexts through personal experience.
So... heart disease can be attributed almost entirely to eating meat? That result seems too good to be true.

If it's the study I've seen, the improvement can be largely attributed to a tremendous drop in both calories and fat. Instead of their idea of a balanced diet being a bacon double cheeseburger in each hand with a gallon of ice cream for desert, it became rice and legumes and veggies. They shot for keeping fats to no more than 10 percent. They invited participants to dinners so they could experience good tasting, healthy gourmet meals and not feel like this was about deprivation.

Participants dropped tons of weight without trying and without having to try to control themselves. They could eat all they wanted every day and not get enough calories to remain clinically obese.
I feel sympathy for anyone that loses a job without cause...but being disabled or a veteran does not convey any special rights on you.
Because the health factors that cause heart attacks aren't exclusively attributable to diet.
I disagree. If the goal is to encourage people to build things that benefit everyone rather than just those who built it originally, this is a good way to do that. If it were me I would go a step further and require that it be released under a copyleft license rather than a permissive one, but Google seems fairly averse to copyleft licenses, and they're the ones funding this.

I'm sure there are plenty of VCs out there that would fund the development of proprietary machine learning software. This is something different.
No, it isn’t. SV didn’t happen anywhere in Europe, very likely because of WWII. Norway is mostly concerned about oil these days, but Sweden have been doing very well in tech for its size. Second most unicorn per capita in the world after SV is what people like to say.
I always lock my front door from the outside when I leave the house. This requires using my keys (unlike locking it from the inside). This means I never leave my keys behind. It does require remembering to lock the front door but I don't have any problem remembering to do that.
Too much caution makes doctor advice useless. If they tell you to go waste time and money at the hospital every time there's a 1% chance of an issue, you won't actually go when it matters. That's one reason I try to ask doctors to estimate % risk.

On this note: WebMD is not a doctor but has the same issue. There's no differentiating between a real emergency issue and a CYA liability one.
Why in the world is Debian like this? Their buggy latexmk is also from 2015.

Somehow I feel like every system that I want to keep updated stays on an old version, and every system that I want to keep pinned to some version just force-feeds me its updates...
I disagree. If you can’t tell the difference between a smooth talker and strong technical competence you are probably interested in the wrong qualities. I have interviewed enough now to see why some companies cannot figure it out. Ask yourself if you really actually want a senior or a strong junior.

It comes down to interest. A good senior got that way because they like solving challenging problems. They are not interested in trendy framework bullshit. In other words talk about the problems and potential solutions. Are things in place to make the job easier? Seniors don’t need easier and this is a huge turnoff.

When I hear companies try to sell me with frameworks and process I know they are blowing smoke. At the very least they are boring and at worst you will be working with incompetent people who are as self-diluted as the company. I agree that filtering candidates is a good idea though.

The reason why some companies cannot figure this out is because they don’t value the problems at hand. They need bodies to put fingers on keyboards and are willing to pay more for people who don’t completely suck. Experience and competence are not the same as excellence but considering the candidate pool I can see why companies compromise on quality.
What do you do when the person you selected ends up being a wrong fit? Do you try to rehabilitate (makem them fit, if that’s even possible in a small team), of do you cut your loses? What’s worked out for you?
Correct, it looks like censorship, rather than out-right banning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_censorship_in_the_United_...

...but it's not like the United States has never tried to ban books in the recent past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anarchist_Cookbook#Legalit...
Agreed that storage is cheap, unless it's in a live cluster. Right now I keep 100% of the data in Redshift then use window functions to unload the latest X per id. Keeping it in real time I haven't tried but right now the unloading of the full dataset of last X per id takes multiple days on a 6 node cluster.

The analysis at end of month is simply give me 100% of the data set chunked up by ID. All analysis is done outside of the system.

Flat files is my thinking right now with S3 and prefixes per partition, I'm not sure on file format, since one thing is with each day's data being able to process and update existing data quickly. Current thought is to load current day's data to Redshift -> unload sorted by id -> process concurrently. With multiple prefixes on S3 I won't hit the rate limits. My main worry is if read in, loading/parsing each file will take too long to be scalable at 250-500 million unique id's per day. I wanted to check here before going down that route to see if anyone had a different recommendation.
This is the comment I replied to: "When did that change? They were incredibly trying to cultivate and outright force mega cities.

Leaving behind mega cities that are empty. Hell if you want to play out a pretend version of "I am legend" you could get pretty close. (Minus the zombies) "

I am I having a stroke, or did that comment refer to "mega cities that are empty"?
I think your wording was a bit too hostile, but I basically agree. If you yourself are comfortable with Debian, you can just install stable and ignore it for years in a way you just can't with Mint or Ubuntu. Every time I've tried it I've always just ended up switching them after the n-th time of finding out the automatic updates broke at some random point a year or so ago and now there are weird problems with the sources and things not parsing correctly when I try to manually update.

Debian stable with xfce is a good enough XP-ish interface that no one really gets confused by it, and is stable enough that you can just forget about it for like forever and everything is still fine.
I kind of agree and kind of dont. I have a super simple inital question I always ask in interviews: Write me a function, in any language, that takes an array (or list) of integers and returns the sum. 90% of people that can do that are decent, and sadly i'd have to say i'm shocked by how many people struggle with this question, or the follow up of "ok interesting implementation, now what can go wrong at runtime?"

It's a great 15 minute question that I find often correlates highly with the people that get offers.
> What if Google or Facebook offer you $300k no risk, with a relatively standard work life balance.

If. People here sometimes make it seem like a senior engineer can just walk into a FAANG, chat with the receptionist, and walk out with a $300k offer. While it is certainly not the hardest thing in the world, these companies are still pretty selective and only employ about 10% of the total seniors in the market. More likely than not you are not getting that kind of offer. This isn't even taking into account downleveling, which Google in particular is notorious for.
The code I've written recently relies heavily on async and data classes, both of which are recent additions. I can't imagine choosing Python 2 at this point.
I also switched my parents off Windows to Ubuntu for a while (when I used Linux desktop myself and before OS X). It worked pretty well and didn't cause them too much pain. Subsequently of course I got them to switch to Apple and that's even better, primarily because they don't have to feel that they're using some weird thing their child encouraged them to use. Avoids the Windows nonsense of computer getting slower and slower all the time, and malware. The only thing I've failed to help them with is the baffling Apple stuff surrounding iCloud and storage on multiple devices.
The point that is being made by the original post is that the process is bad in many companies especially when hiring senior engineers who have a proven track record and have other options. These engineers don't want to spend time and money learning how to crack the coding interview in some bootcamp. They can find work and are put off by the process some companies use and such companies are missing out on good people. Suggesting bootcamps for leetcode and whiteboarding as a solution misses the point as these are not great interview practices.
This is very common in the industry I used to work in. You’d get a sign on bonus but only after a certain threshold. Usually completion of training. If for some reason you didn’t make it to that threshold (lay-off, quit, fail training, etc.) you saw none of the bonus money. It wasn’t even paid out until that threshold was met.

I have sympathy for the couple in that it’s really tough to lose a job you just moved for but unfortunately that’s just kinda life. It doesn’t seem to me a Twitter rant solves anything other than marking one’s self as a potential headache to other employers.
> ...and in that case ask for much more than they open with.

Have you (or anyone reading this) done that? What was the result?
At 500 million+ records, even a 0.01 second per lookup/update is going to be too slow at that scale even in parallel, unless the DB is able to process in parallel without lock contention extremely quickly.
I don't think small phone demand is low.

I think it's just harder to make a small phone very good and premium, and keep the price low.

Concerning the Sony, I personally got the Sony X3 Compact, I was quite disappointed with the Camera. All the Sony smartphones boast great cameras, but when you use it, the UX is bad. Shutter speed is slow, interface is bad. Also like you said, it's not that small. The Google Pixel 3 is only 0.07 inch wider, I think it's a much better choice (camera much better, stock android etc...)
Do you have any more info or reading on Google and copylefts?
> I would put in an honest effort and get 90% of the problem solved, but get denied because my solution wasn't flawless

It's possible that the company stated the take-home work in terms of non-negotiable deliverables, and their baseline for allowing a candidate to move forward is 100% of those, and they prioritize candidates who take initiative and do more work beyond the base requirements.

... not that I would agree with such a process (it biases towards people with more free time, like people with fewer dependents and people who are currently out of a job / underemployed), but it's very possible that this is what you faced.
Do doctors have any training that would equip them to give a remotely accurate risk probability estimate?
There is no correlation between fats and CVD. That's a very old belief (70s) that is debunked. Read this please: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5793267/

Downvoters: Please just read the paper.
Mechanical Turk is an (Amazon) crowd-sourcing site where one can post small jobs (such as surveys) to be completed for a small amount of money (often only $0.05-0.10). I assume "penny vaccums" here is a metaphor for people who complete a large number of tasks for the money.

https://www.mturk.com/
I would personally hate to be in a union. I would much rather deal with the arbitrary authority of a self interested management, which is semi-meritocratic, than the stagnant seniority based hierarchy of a union.
I have just skimmed through the article. But my personal experience is lot is ads (at least in Australia) don't mention the salary range in offer. what I would be interested in is the maximum they can afford for a right candidate. since then I stopped applying if there is no pay in the ad and I don't know the company. Lot of companies assume that their pay is higher than Market.
Sounds like the plot of Condor, the recent TV series, waiting to happen.
Is this anything like "don't be evil"? I want to try to not be cynical. But so much of ethical concern, especially regarding privacy, has come out of the Google corner in the past few years that the "for social good" part instantly makes me paranoid about what it will really eventually be used for.

And the story [1] about Google patenting a person's work after an interview comes to mind.

Having got that off my chest, hopefully the participants read the legal terms very carefully and might even consider having a lawyer review them.

[1]
https://patentpandas.org/stories/company-patented-my-idea
The name was throwing me off. Thought it was relating to TaskWarrior at first.
Came for news of a delayed version of a cherished classic game. Severely disappointed.
> Should the company be forced to keep paying redundant employees as some form of social justice or obligation?

One would presume that much of the current agitation in the body populace regardless of political stripe would be mollified by such an attempt. The life expectancy may even rise.
Eh, I think generally if you want to set up linux for a non-technical person, regardless you're going to need to personally spend a couple hours configuring and setting everything up for them initially, so the difference of editing sources.list and adding "main contrib non-free" to a couple lines is pretty minimal.
Because a few years ago it was the most easy to use language and people were creating brilliant tools and software libraries that, truly, changed the world. Because of the low barrier to entry everyone and their grandma became copycats by releasing their own revolutionary new framework. For a long while being a master of the majority of the JavaScript landscape made you elite. So developers minds were stretched, no, pulled apart by the diverging number of JavaScript frameworks.

Before long the list of things they were supposed to keep track of got so long that it just became impossible to do. I haven't been able to keep track of it since but I assume that just means the number of JavaScript frameworks is expanding faster than the speed of light.
When Google advertises a project for "Social Good", it really means, "In line with our liberal progressive political beliefs". There are a lot of things that Google is, altruistic is not one of them.
3.4 will reach EOL very soon.
Debian stable (Stretch aka Debian 9, released summer 2017, regular support through ~summer 2020) has Python 3.5. Debian oldstable (Jessie aka Debian 8, released summer 2015, regular support through summer 2018) had Python 3.4. If you're on oldstable it's time to think about upgrading....

The next stable release (Buster aka Debian 10) is just starting the freeze process now and expected to come out this summer - Debian is in practice on a ~two-year release cycle, and regular support for each release lasts one year after the next stable release comes out. Buster will have Python 3.7 as default.
And even if they did make those promises and honored them, you're taking a risk that they won't. And it's not like you get the FAANG salary back if they can't follow through on working hours, the tech stack, or whatever other consideration is important.
For simple stuff, just open the GUI+REPL, and start plotting in Matlab. Great for quick documentation graphics.
If he can architect worth a damn, he should be able to code his way out of a paper bag.
Context: 15 years of experience, multiple public talks (including AWS reInvent), own chunk of infra serving hundreds millions users.

Got a message from yet another self driving startup. Agreed to do a phone screen out of curiosity. Interviewer is 6 months out of school and his first question - why do you want to work for us.
My answer - I actually don’t, I didn’t even know you exist and it is your job to convince me. Thoughts - i’m wasting my time.
Her story is heartbreaking, and reminds me that once a company is “done with you” they don’t care about you anymore regardless of what kind of employee you were. Never expect a company to do right by you. Always act in your own best interests, even if those are not in alignment with the company. If working in the Bay Area has taught me anything, is you always need to be planning your next move. There is no such thing as job security in our present economy. Working at a large company is often times even more dangerous than a small one or startup because decisions like this which are made far away from your own sphere of influence. Companies are like sociopaths: they have no capacity for empathy, and if any does exist, it’s likely been legislated into them, taken from them by force or by public shame.

If there are any companies left that actually do treat their employees like anything more than disposable assets, it’s only a matter of time before they are “disrupted” by one that is willing to do whatever it takes. Capitalism is a perverse force that cares only for efficiency, not for human lives.
Deep Learning for Natural Language Processing (NLP) : Using RNNs and CNNs
thefutur.com has a lot of content for designers selling services which can cross over into web design/dev.
Growing Symbiosis Between RPA and AI
Did you even read what she wrote ?

She has a list of grievances not just the signing bonus. I think if Tesla had shown her husband a bit more respect she likely wouldn't have posted it.

Giving someone 0-day notice and physically escorting them out of the company is simply unacceptable.
The problem is it's very easy to write non-performant JS code if you're adding/removing/modifying lots of DOM elements, and attempting to do it performantly by-hand tends to lead to a lot of bugs. VDOM isn't performant in the sense that it modifies the DOM faster but in the sense that it allows you to write code that wouldn't be performant and have it execute efficiently. In React you worry about your data flow and component structure without needing to worry about DOM performance.
In my experience doctors are terrible at this, although it's supposed to be basically their entire job. I really think they should get more training in it, or some type of Bayes-esque tool to make what they're thinking explicit.
Downleveling? I can guess what that means but some clarity would be appreciated. With sources if possible.
Perhaps it’s not clear.

Article was written in 2012 while the author was an economist in residence at Valve. He would later become Greece’s Finance minister in 2015.
Starter Tutorial for Python 3 List
On the subject of recruiter emails, I just recently got one for a job at my former employer, a clear indication that the recruiter didn't read my resume at all. Also I've gotten an offer for a 3 week contract senior developer position on the other side of the continent. I swear that recruiter must have been mental or desperate.

From my perspective as a job seeker, it's pretty obvious that recruiters really just don't care. And the weird mental games being played on applicants with increasingly stupid and inflated requirements only means you're going to have fewer applicants.
It looks like horrible structured code, not horrible spaghetti code, I can spot a few if blocks.

It's php code with a few SQL commands, probably autogenerated. (Autogenerated code is usually not nice.)
Smart kiosk startup Warung Pintar raises $27.5m series B round from Line, others
> For someone out of the music codec game, is Opus generally the best codec to go with these days?

not for compatibility. mp3 is ubiquitous. my 2017 VW can play mp3 and even flac from an sd card. i doubt it even knows what opus is.

i think you'd be hard pressed to tell a difference between a well-encoded (flac source) 192kbps vbr mp3 and 160 kbps opus. the file size of the latter will be 30% smaller.

> What software do you use to listen to music on your computers?

on windows, foobar2000. it's superb, no bs and has tons of optional plugins.
I agree that a message like "This program attempted to do something the system won't allow" would be far more useful, along with a "more info" button with a more detailed error description behind it. It sure beats "oops" and "something went wrong". But people tend to forget what a computer said or did and remember how it made them feel. So the market pressure is toward mollycoddling error messages and away from informative ones.

(Also, the word "oops" was chosen because it connotes "something went wrong and it's our fault" -- probably chosen to avoid implying that it was the user's fault. Really ingenious, again, if your goal is to keep users comfortable rather than fully informing them.)
I don't understand how one could possibly design a system that they couldn't even begin to implement. Not framework/tool specific stuff, but can't right code? At all?
It always bothered me when people who wanted me to join their startup were bothered by me not wanting wait for something to vest that long. So you mean to tell me I can do all the work you need me to do right now, and then just get rid of me before it vests and I don't get it?

I really think there should be 2 different vesting terms
- 1 in case I quit (can be longer term in this case)
- and another in case I get fired (shorter vesting period IMO). Call it early termination.