skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In all countries I've seen, except the U.S., Aldi cashiers move items into a small buffer area, and the customer then transfers them back into their cart, in sync with the cashier. In some non-German countries (e.g. UK), customers often don't cooperate or are slower than the cashier, which reduces efficiency. The U.S. system is different, where the cashier directly pushes items into the cart, and also there seems to be a weird cart-switch going on, where you get the cart of the person who used to be in front of you. My guess is that Aldi couldn't educate U.S. customers that they have to work in sync with the cashier, and then they came up with this solution.

U.S. checkout shape: https://www.trbimg.com/img-589b8178/turbine/ct-aldi-expansio...

Non-U.S. checkouts: https://www.lebensmittelzeitung.net/gallery/media/852/15994-... http://www.wochenanzeiger-muenchen.de/media/archive/wsp/5634...
It's a great idea for an MVP. It's amazing what you can do with WordPress sometimes. You do not want to be writing custom code for months just to validate the idea. You can ship quick and get feedback.
Yes, they do have an agenda, because how else you explain patches like this:

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/1137200d6b7fcf8fc401b5...

Note that they didn't fork the project under some different name, they shipped it like this under the original name.
Impressive work!
Paid back by the people who this was passed down to.
I'm also super interested in better, or more usable, recommendations.
"I'll spend hours brushing up on Scheme just to test you on something completely irrelevant to the role just because I like playing Resumé Gotcha".

Yeah that's a thanks but no thanks from me. I wouldn't work for this guy in a thousand years.
This is obvious, I think.

Some argue that biological species are intelligent -- and maybe even conscious -- on evolutionary time scales.
Having just discussed this with my partner (who is in the books industry), her suggestion is a limited number proper print run to get the cost of individual copies down. It may be a good idea to run a Kickstarter or Indegogo campaign to get interest up in the print run AND get money upfront for the costs. You could even limit the run number, and sign and number each copy for the first backers ?

Aside from that, I'd also be happy to sort UK/EU distribution for people using your current print on demand model, if I could have a free copy of each book? :)

Contact me via jaruzel [at] jaruzel.com if you are interested.
- "Hey, I worked at FAANG or better, creating latest super-duper tech you use daily, was featured on TV, got multiple awards etc."

- "Let's see if you can do Fizz Buzz!"
The best quality/price laptops I've bought in the last couple of decades were from Aldi (their brands : Medion and Lifetec) It took 5 years for the competition to reach the same offering at that price. (That was in 2002, now it's less spectacular)
I kept using these laptop for 5-7 years...
You can rationalize this all you want, it felt out of character and rushed to most people.
This exact mindset of "here's a feature, I'm sure nobody out there on the Internet would use it maliciously" is what brought us several decades of Microsoft software vulnerabilities.
I can feel the pain here but in my own way. As a hiring manager it must be so frustrating to be assaulted with massive idiocy when you are looking for a candidate. Think about it:

- candidates have zero penalty for applying to something they know they aren't qualified for

- there's constant noise about getting one of those well paying "tech jobs"

- everyone who has ever logged hello world to the console thinks they are the best programmer in the world

- people are desperate and will lie

- the ratio of unqualified to qualified candidates must be 100 to 1

It must be like dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean. The one thing I love about this, though, is the "senior developer" who hasn't read a book in a decade and has to get a new job. ahahahahaha. The moment when that mountain of BS collapses underneath them must be ga-lorious.

Also though, I get the feeling it's a different job market than it was in 2010. I'm still trying to understand what I think I see.

Languages seem to be able to cover multiple platforms now. Programming I don't think is as technical as it once was. At the same time everything seems to be a mess right now. Everything's broken. There's a million and a half frameworks for everything. ...It's like programming as a field has become much more broad, while simultaneously lowering in quality, with knowledge that was once spent on technical mastery now being traded for either lower wages or domain knowledge. So if you went to school and got a degree in programming that was once pretty impressive but now you're just some dude who can "code".
Most of this is good, but one real WTF:

"Editor Flailing

It’s funny how many people can’t edit text on any machine but their own. I tend to interview people on a laptop running Ubuntu, and I open gedit for them to use, with the offer that they can use any other Unix editor they like. Most can barely navigate gedit, and it’s stupid simple.

Don’t ever let yourself get hung up on the editor. If you can’t figure out the magic command keys to indent code the way you like, just press the damn space bar and indent it yourself. Flailing in the editor wastes time."

Talk about an arbitrary condition. Sure, being adaptable and/or pragmatic with respect to tooling is a nice thing for your candidate to have, but to prioritize it at a similar level to knowing what your company does?! Are you really going to hire the incompetent-but-familiar-with-emacs Linux user over the capable-but-rigid Windows dev? Unless you're looking for an SA or full-stack dev, this seems rather arbitrary, especially considering the availability of plenty of cross-platform, fully-featured editors.
I once interviewed in a code base I didn't know, using a language I didn't know (kotlin, so close to a language I do know, Java), in an editor I didn't know. I didn't get the job, but I don't believe it was because of my performance on the coding portion of the application (based on inference). But that was an error on my part. They offered to let me code a different problem on my own machine and I didn't take advantage, having a bit of overconfidence in my ability to pick up things quickly.

But I prefer to let applicants pick whatever language (within limits) and editor/ide they want for our current hiring process.

It's much more about how they solve a problem and navigate their tools (because that's an indicator too) than how they can use my stack.
Oh, it very much is: Windscale and Sellafield are linked in the public mind here. Here, Sellafield was seen as a rebranding exercise for Windscale.

> Wikipedia seems to think it is prohibited - 1999 Electricity Regulation Act.

I was careful with my use of language: it's not illegal, but under 18.6 of the act, "An order under this section shall not provide for the use of nuclear fission for the generation of electricity."

So it's not _illegal_ or banned, but the goverment simply won't grant licenses. Also, it specifically refers to fission. Something like the thorium fuel cycle might be considered legal under the act, depending on how you read it.
You could also interpret as the interviewer making the effort to ask the candidate questions where they can shine.

I always try to start with a technical question where the candidate can make a good impression and get confident.
Back then they had much less variation in inventory and very limited price groups: all products fit into the ~10 tiers they had, ranging from 0.19 to 3.99 or so.

The increased variation in inventory and the scanners came at about the same time, and they only did that when they figured out how to keep their famous checkout speed. (and it's still slightly slower than it was back then)
Leonardo's Codex Atlanticus (EN Link in Lower Right)
Air taxis will become possible only when a quiet method of vertical take off and landing is developed, if ever. No current VTOL lightweight aircraft would be able to gain even experimental status in an urban environment, let alone thousands of them running at all hours of the day. The noise levels propellers make are absolutely horrendous.
I think the US government’s “plain language” site has examples showing that changing passive to active can definitely improve texts, like here: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before-and-after/empl...
Italy is not a typical "wealthy EU country".
Not sure how you would drink something with the pressure of 2 GPa..
I have a lot of criticism for the Scandinavian economic model, with 50% of the working population employed in the public sector and a >50% tax burden on average. This will be visible if someone happens to read my HN comments once in a while.

But I have to say that this purely market economic view of life-saving healthcare, concluding "there is no economically viable way to ensure that everyone has access to life-saving aid, because participation has to be voluntary and that means insurance will be prohibitably expensive" is deeply cruel. Honest question, is it broadly representative for Americans to take this view without considering the human consequences to someone who is unlucky with genetics, family or circumstances? Or is the question just ignored until a problem hits?

It's really very simple to solve this in a humane way. Government pays for all healthcare that's necessary to survive and thrive to a humanely minimum standard of care, either providing the services themselves or employing private-sector partners to do so. This is paid through taxation of everyone, spreading the cost on the entire population. Private insurance or paying for elective procedures is still an option for those who have the means and wish to do so.

There will be some upheaval because the insurance sector and treatment centers will be in a dramatically worse negotiation position, but it's worth it for the public good.
The repeal of Moore's law will be a blessing in disguise, I think. Not only will programmers need to get clever in a traditional sense but, also, a new era of specialized hardware will require a more intimate understanding of the bits and pieces. I'm optimistic.
Can't it be both? Men tend to be more aggressive, so the Peter Principle is more likely to apply to them.
Agreed about being able to access some backlog being important, but even in well-implemented systems with good search etc. I personally haven't found backlog older than maybe a few weeks that useful.

Similarly, I'd disagree about friction, but I can see how that might be cultural/personal preference - none of the chat systems I've used provides good-enough tracking of "I still need to take care of this" compared to email clients with a few flags.
What's the weight of the Marinas Trench in terms of Libraries of Congress?
Sure, agreed. Except in very special circumstances (devrel, prod system admin, startup first hires) the ability to think clearly under pressure isn't key to success as a developer.

That's why I think that a paid take home test is the best way to understand how someone can program.

But the job of an interviewer is to get data any way they can, and the job of the interviewee is to provide that data as best they can. For the interviewee that means it is almost impossible to over communicate what you are thinking when faced with a problem. (I know, it's not easy to do, I have been there.) It's not natural or what you do when you are programming typically, but an interview is not a natural environment, nor should it be.
This is a great reason to learn vi for basic editing tasks. It's everywhere. Even if you typically use a different editor/ide, vi is a common ground.

Disclosure: I'm an emacs user
Wow he has a rosy picture of the past. I don't see where he gets the five nines from. He doesn't even quote anybody on it. Most of the examples he gives would have been zero nines back in the day because they were not available at all!

Wikipedia for example has one nine availability in my life. Because when I sleep my phone is still on.
Get them coding on a whiteboard, problem solved :)
That's what I thought - @types/three *.d.ts got imported via a script in this PR:

https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/pull/15597

There's some discussion in there, but the way I read the conclusion was they were going to be bundle the typings going forward.
No one is saying that, but companies are trying to create a accurate estimate of the applicants ability and blanking gets in the way of that, so they end up hiring someone who they are more certain about.
Honest question, how much is this about Java and not the JVM and its from "July 30, 2004", is it even relevant now 15 years later ?
If it's "just like any other cultural norm", then we still have a problem - as I wrote upthread and elsewhere, cultural norms are extremely difficult to create or change. You're much better off seeking different points of intervention... like making producers of (what becomes) trash involved and primarily responsible for reducing the amount of litter.
While I wouldn't consider that a "correct answer", I'd be willing to be patient and let them think about it for a minute or 2. I may look annoyed, or even pull out my phone and start browsing news, but it's not actually taking points away from them until it drags on too long.

Of course, there's not really a way to tell in advance if you get an interviewer like me, or a jerk that insists you know everything off the top of your head.
Q: Why fork Container Linux?

A: “Ideally, we would not need to fork a project to support it. But in order to provide commercial support for a Linux distro, we need to have some control over the build and delivery process. And to be able to legally deliver it, we have to make changes; removing trademark terms, for example. Thus, there is no real way that we see to provide the end product without a fork.“
Yes, she literally says many times "I will take what's mine with blood and fire".
A few more things:

1) Be humble. Don't expect people to take it easy on you because you got street cred (You are a ruby contributor? You still need to show them how good you are at coding Ruby). Many people with creds get offended when they realize they are not as good as their credentials would imply.

2) Know yourself. Most candidates I've seen, including myself, encounter a moment in the interview where they get hit by the nerves. Know that it's going to happen, announce it to the interviewer, recompose yourself, start again when calmer. You are not going to fail an interview because you are nervous. You will not succeed if you are terrified, panic, and shut up.

3) Explain your reasoning. The way you approach a problem, which is a large part of what the interviewer wants to see is in your mind only unless you vocalize it. With a good enough mental approach, you will get a lot of slack on the actual code by most interviewers.

4) Interview your interviewer. Go prepared with smart, non-trivial questions on the job and the company. Ensure your interviewer is an empathic, intelligent, and humble person. Assume anything annoying you experience is going to be relatively permanent at the job -- will that be acceptable or not?
I'm by no means a expert in the field, but I've used https://github.com/scalanlp/breeze for this....
Most likely anyone deploying this is also capable of redirecting all standard dns traffic destined for external DNS servers to this resolver instead.

The use of host files and direct connections to external IP addresses based upon ip address are rare among user workstations. Any legitimate need to connect directly via IP address could be handled by exception.
Well of cause you can think quietly about it, but you in an interview situation so you need to communicate that’s what your doing. Literally just saying “hmm, that should not happen, let me think about what’s going on” is all it takes.
I don’t know, I’ve found in my experience with some people that being only able to operate productively in a very particular setup is a real negative signal. And you’re giving the article a very inaccurate reading.
I worked with a guy that had FAANG on his resume, and we ended up letting him go because he couldn't actually do real programming for a device from that same company. He flailed for months to get simple things done, and failed.

Just having worked somewhere doesn't mean you actually did well there.
The twitter account is quite a bit 'crazier' than the personal website.

EDIT: not that there's anything wrong with that per se.
Ask Notch, he doesn’t favor being inclusive at all anymore.
It’s kind of weird to NOT know basic vi/vim if you get to a certain point in your career. If you can’t at least open the software, go into insert mode, and save/quit, have you ever had to ssh into a remote server and edit a config file before? Only excuse I could think of is if you literally did everything in windows for your entire career.
Three.js is insane, in a good way. Great abstraction of WebGL, very user friendly, and surprisingly few things that it can't do, as long as you're willing to think up some workarounds if something you're doing is super unique.
This is why saving money is a fairly sensible life strategy. If you can’t keep 1-2 days of income in savings, it’s unlikely you will react responsibly if you’re paid on a daily basis.
Interestingly, I've heard people say: if you can't code under pressure then you might not be a good fit here, to which my reply has always been:

If day to day coding in your company generates my interview level of anxiety and stress then you are 100% right that I would not be a good fit and you are doing me a favour by not hiring me.

The problem is that some people don't realise just how stressful interviews can be due to them not suffering that level of stress, anxiety etc. so it's difficult for them to see themselves in that position.
A couple of things I've noticed here at Aldi in Ireland. Particularly interested in the psychological aspects:

- The packing area (after the till) is quite small. This means that if you're not packing quickly and putting items back into the trolley then the till operator will have to stop scanning because of the backlog. They will often make subtle eye-contact (with a smile) when they have to stop, this puts the shopper under pressure to pack quicker. I'm a fast packer so it doesn't affect me but I've seen it with other people.

- The till operator will ask you "Cash or Card" before you have finished packing. Another nudge to hurry you on to the next stage.

- They will open a new till the second the queue goes beyond the edge of the conveyor belt. Often they will open up the till for just one customer and then close it again as the queues have subsided. I've seen a large variance in this though, some Aldi's are lazer-like, others are more laid-back.
I'm genuinely still unsure if this is a parody or not. The first half of the comic just describes Google's business model and the second seems to be trying to outsource the cost of G/TPUs to the end user. Then at the end they go bankrupt and (presumably) sell their control over the data to a vulture fund.

None of this addresses the fundamental problem of advertising companies, once people learn what they're doing they just want them to feck off and leave them alone, without any regard for future promises.
This looks like the most important point:

> Dr. Miskin worked around the power conundrum by leaving out the batteries. Instead, he powers the robots by shining lasers on tiny solar panels on their backs
Why not "if a multi-argument list is too long to go on 1 line, each argument must go on its own line"?

Maybe that would fail to put long strings on their own line?
These are usually agency interviewers or HR people. Sure, I'd definitely take that into account if this was interview with IT lead, but you don't get to that before going through this programming task with some HR guy. They will then pass your solution to some devs for assessment, because they don't understand it. But they are the gatekeepers.
Here's a fun fact to add to the mix: Aldi's gin is one of the best in the world, and cheap to boot. And they're pretty good at various other spirits and beverages too. Do they carry those in the US?

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/aldi...
The abstractions aren't making this problem the developers without a willingness to work under the abstractions are.

I wrote this following tool in less than 90 minutes 5 years ago because I had some time left over before presentations at a company hack-a-thon. I updated it recently at about another 90 minutes of time.

https://github.com/prettydiff/semanticText

That tool was trivial to write and maintain. It has real utility value as an accessibility tool. I could write that tool because I am familiar with the DOM, the layer underneath. Many developers are not even aware of the problems (SEO and accessibility) this tool identifies much less how to write it. jQuery won't get you the necessary functionality.
I think thats what the article is trying to say with that second paragraph. Don't worry about how to use the editor the "right" way and just focus on the getting the code to work with whats available, which he pretty much confirmed in the third paragraph by mentioning how he hired someone who struggled with the editor but got the job done anyway.
I have had such hard times with this. I find it very hard to think about the problem and to think what to say to this person without fucking up the interview.

I mean, you don't want to say: "I'm going to trial & error this shit while the fucking compiler builds and the stupid tests say it works" which is how must programming is done anyway.
Unfortunately this wasn't the last time a high-ranking Swedish politician was murdered either.

https://www.thelocal.se/20110828/35814
Yeah, towns vary.

On one end you have places like Copenhagen, where traffic lights are configured for cyclists and cyclists stop.

Most places aren't like Copenhagen. A few years ago I often had to pass through an intersection where cars had to wait for about eight seconds on average and my own average wait was two and a half minutes (one full phase plus a bit). That intersection was a big fuckyou to cyclists.

People learn from their environment and adapt their behaviour.
Facebook’s A.I. Whiz Now Faces the Task of Cleaning It Up
As someone new to three.js, and who hasn't dabbled with 3D since the 90s, I found this really easy to follow - really good intro!
Yes, and if your interviewing for a sales position they might ask you to “Sell me this pen”. It’s a trivial task for someone experienced, so why take issue with it?
Internet hug from a random stranger.

You seem highly intelligent, so I'm assuming you have explored this avenue thoroughly. But just in case not, have you investigated the immigration terms of all countries that have socialized healthcare? I was thinking there could be a chance that one would be able to give you permanent residency. Honestly, it seems as if there should be a policical asylum (no pun intended) quota for this kind of thing.

I read a local newspaper story of an American who was able to immigrated to Norway some years ago, motivated by the fact that his American insurance didn't cover a very important back operation or something like that.

If you are capable of holding a Norwegian 80% job of 40*0.8 hours per week with the 4 or 5 weeks standard holiday (probably with some local-doctor sanctioned sick leave in there), a working visa would qualify you for medical aid here immediately, and give you permanent residency after 3 years, if I read the regulations correctly. Should probably be double-checked by a local lawyer.

https://www.udi.no/en/want-to-apply/work-immigration/skilled...

Please feel free to reply if you'd like to investigate this further. I'll give you my contact information. (My profile is normaly pseudonymous due to political comments and other stuff, so the info is not in my profile).
What's wrong with using nano for that?
NDA can be breached. What matters if the data was leaked or not, not if it was done legally (Data breaches seldom are)