skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Lay-offs and Hiring Freeze due to Covid-19
As most of you know the economic meltdown. This has resulted in numerous lay-offs across many organizations. While the companies irresponsibly fire people, the struggle doesn't end there.

There are numerous companies out there (quite large by headcount and global presence) who have been pulling out of interview process. This is very disheartening for candidates as they have no control over the situation.
Additionally there is no way to know when the hiring freeze will be lifted, and if you're candidature would still be valid.

In a time like this - I would like to put together a list of resources for people who are looking for job in software engineering due to being laid off.

Please comment and share your experiences -

- If your company is hiring - is remote interviews an option? what about on-boarding after the offer is rolled out? is the option open to remote candidates?

- If you have been laid off/fired
- Do you know of firms who have gone on hiring freeze in the middle of process? How was this handled? Did the firm talk about next steps?
- Do you know of firms who are open to hiring by conducting remote interviews? Have you been on-boarded remotely?

Please share your experiences, every little bit could help.

Stay indoor, stay safe.
If you are looking for a MacBook Air replacement, check out the Dell XPS 13 or ThinkPad x2xx series.
The Dell in particular has very impressive build quality.

If you want a MBP, the ThinkPad x1 Carbon or T4xxs series (note the s, for the slimmer version) are still the best replacements IMHO.
Apparently the CTO is a KDE dev, so it's properly open. Has definitely made me very interested in one too.
Here’s some at the top of the page: https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/
I followed the gravity probe b experiment when it was happening. It tried to measure two effects of Einstein’s theory. In layman terms how far should one be to see the curvature of spacetime? My son was asking and I couldn’t offer an explanation as to how much the earth curves the spacetime around it. How could one use gravitational force value of 9.8 m/s2 help in grasping it the curvature of spacetime, since that is something we are aware of.
It is progress. Apple runs a monopoly, people seem to not be able to escape (I'm on Windows) and Apple has struggled to fix an utterly broken keyboard for 3 or more years. So, finally they did this on an entry model.

Even I who gave up on Apple thought, hey what a nice machine.
how's your Rust compile time in this?
What would the escape key do in iPadOS though? There isn't one on the on screen keyboard, never has been.
Motherboard, I think.
Sounds a lot like Apple, that other Steve Jobs company.
Only for the record, not only Chinese, the idea dates back to the previous SARS (Italian but not that bad in Google Translate):

https://www.iss.it/web/guest/primo-piano/-/asset_publisher/o...
The novelty must have worn off, a long time ago. Almost all announcements of updates to existing products, look like a copypasta, they probably have templates and a well-oiled PR machinery to follow through.
How will the coronavirus affect fintech?
Just need to corner the wheelbarrow market.
Or just that you had to spread the local files over multiple drives, it wasn't really tied to the use of NFS.

The /bin and /sbin directories would be on the boot partition/disk and would contain the programs needed to get to multiuser state.

I still use multiple partitions, even on a 1TB disk.
You've got it backwards. This is the reality where UNIX (et al.) terminals were reinvented, throughout the 1980s as I said. This is the real problem, people going around talking of making a "better terminal", and when pressed talking about things that the world actually did make better, decades ago, and treating as speculative I/O paradigms that demonstrably exist today.
I think that is how you access a DND toggle on mac OS as well.
>Now that they fixed it we should be happy about it.

No, we moved on and do not care. There are many companies that make laptops and keyboards. 5 years too late.
http://apple.com/v/smart-keyboard/j/images/overview/smart_co...
What's it like to develop on a MacBook Air these days? I have a 2016 13" MacBook Pro and am thinking of upgrading, but I don't know how it'll handle JS/Docker/Rails.
That shifts the problem elsewhere (now you need a carrier board with additional electronics), but it doesn't solve it.

The pi form factor is fine, but 2-pin Molex-type connector in parallel with the incoming 5V would be a great addition. Hell, even just leave pads or holes and I'll solder in a connector myself. RPi's are being used more and more in embedded applications. It would be nice if the Foundation acknowledged that and made it a bit easier to work with.
I can't imagine a tablet is ever going to win for extremely typing-heavy tasks like writing and coding. This new keyboard also seems like it requires you to be sitting at a table to work well, which doesn't cover a lot of the cases where I type on a laptop.

To be honest, it's hard for me to think of cases where the tablet is better suited outside of things like digital drawing/painting, and some niche cases like at an expo.
Yes. It’s miserable with any substantial JS project. Those extra cores should help with the new model.
Every supplier in a marketplace has the ability to lower marginal prices in a price war.

Only effective cartels can raise prices at will. And OPEC’s power to do this is pretty clearly diminished, if not destroyed, by expanded US and Russian capacity.
Yes!

Mainly his points:
"There's no solidarity with the ugly" and "people would rather be called the worst racial slur for their race then be called ugly"
Violet takes inspiration from HTML, bootstrap, Angular/React/Vue to make build Voice Apps as easy as web pages.

I created it because I have needed to create 12+ Voice projects a year for the last 3 years.

Would love to get your thoughts, questions, and any feedback.
re 'doubled perf': AMD Ryzen 4000 Notebooks are coming these days, not sure if the Macbook is then again old tech.
TBH I thought I would be hanging on for the forthcoming 14" MBP to replace my trusty 2012 MBA... but this ticks all the boxes

I'll still be sad to lose the SD card slot though
I guess all these staff members are now sitting in Chinese prisons:

https://www.caixinglobal.com/about-caixin/
They were talking. You don't know their gender nor should you assume it to be male.
Hmm. I think I see what you're saying. Presumably if one of the markers you'd want to capture is "presence of antibody for covid-19", and if the device you're using can do that, you wouldn't need ML -- obviously.

But I was thinking a little more macroscopically. We don't have any device that can see antibodies or anything as obvious in real time. Instead, we have to collect samples and test them separately in controlled environments while we look for specific markers we know to be signs of infection.

What ML does well though is see patterns in data we don't. Rather than find specific markers, I was thinking we could feed a series of different values into a model to see if a pattern emerged. We can't observe the virus directly, but we can measure the percentage makeup of different chemicals in someone's breath and see if there's a pattern in those we know to be infected vs those we know aren't -- the training set would be the pile of tests already conducted. Then we can apply that model to new data and test the results.
Sources I find claim "system binaries":

http://www.linfo.org/sbin.html
Wow what? I don’t get it. You really want wires? Why? Just because? Nostalgia?

What’s the deal? It’s not sound quality, that’s for sure.
Isn't general production ramping up in China?
Farming subsidies for food systematically cause overproduction. This is problematic environmentally for land use and climate. It also accelerates soil depletion and salinification.
And this has led to de facto standards, like '#!/bin/sh' is a 'standard' shell shebang, but not POSIX; if you want your script to be portable, you have to use '#!/usr/bin/env sh'. env is forever in '/usr/bin' probably because it first came about after new tools started moving to '/usr'. And I don't think env's file path is even in POSIX, it's just a de facto standard.

Another fun fact is that execve() (which executes shebangs) only allows a single argument to the shebang program. Meaning if you use '#!/usr/bin/env sh', you can't specify arguments to 'sh' in the shebang. In any case, the name of the file being executed is appended as an additional argument at the end of the shebang.
> Of course, the Python function named 'min' could very well implement an infimum in this case, and it would be OK.

Using min(∅) = +inf and max(∅) = -inf would violate the otherwise valid constraint that min(x) ≤ max(x). I'd be a little uncomfortable with it for that reason.

> The right choice depends on context.

Definitely.
anyone know which model of Iris Plus graphics it has?
For folks wondering, Magic Keyboard refers to Apple going back to scissor switches as opposed to the super-high failure rate butterfly keyboards that they had to extend warranties for.

Pro tip/Side note: Don't but a 2016-2019 MacBook as they have faulty keyboards. Even with the extended warranty Apple had to offer for all of them, when they break, Apple replaces them with another of the faulty design ones.
Three dots on the bottom? Just 3 conductors? Then, very likely some custom IC is still involved to send 3.0 over them.
Why would you keep rebuilding the container constantly though?
The main thing is, "so-and-so proved that" or "he showed that" or "they demonstrated scientifically that" refer to processes that can't convey certainty. Even in mathematics there's no certainty because mathematicians are fallible and someone may eventually find a flaw in a proof.
I still wish I could run Xcode on it. It’s too nice of a machine to have to spin up a cloud server to develop on.

One concern: my iPad Pro 1 smart Keyboard died after 2 years.
Same in the European countries I've lived in: a "check" isn't a thing, except for some specific things like certain cancer screenings. You visit the doctor when you're sick, otherwise you don't. I think it's a reasonable expectation that your body will signal if something needs to be looked after.
I have a cron job making graphs from their data,

https://tonybox.net/posts/covid19/
That sounds like a shrink of a single ThunderX2 socket.
I'd say, expect two of this in a 1U system, or maybe rather 2 separate 2S boards in a 2U case with shared power/cooling.
Hm, true, I guess I neglected to remember that unemployment is a state-managed program.
Dialogue Flybook, is that you!? After a decade — and half!?
Ubuntu works too.
cf https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22492223
The three options aren't mutually exclusive imo, so the students can start right away with cloud resources before getting in more serious things which will teach them how it works under the hood.
Standard bluetooth mice already work, they've just buried mouse/trackpad support under the accessibility settings in iOS13.
Yes, that is what I was hinting at. Of course they could lie in the interest of a possible business relationship, but I see no evidence of this. I wonder how the rumor started.
Yeah, the presence of ads on anything I've paid for instantly classifies it as "junk." Windows is now junk.
But shorting markets is already being banned on some platforms i believe
> I'm still waiting for /opt/local to show up...

Wait no more, MacPorts installs to this by default.
One problem when discussing species and subspecies is that there is no clear-cut definition between species, subspecies and "just some genetic diversity".

The best hint is the genetic distance between any two individuals. In general, that distance is bigger between species than between subspecies. But no clear thresholds can be applied to the whole tree of life.

Taxonomy is still mostly defined through differences a researcher can see with his own eyes (or a microscope). Much of taxonomy is in the process of being redefined through molecular methods, though.
I think you just described Facebook.
that would be an insta-buy for me

I really think it's coming -- one day anyway -- perhaps when the Macs run Arm there'll be iPad's running Xcode
Does that explain why now? I mean, stonehenge didn't even exist in its big-stones form 5000 years ago - building that started a few hundred years later. Chew that over.
Show HN: Covid-19 Interactive Model
Clear the current field. Close the current dialog.
From Sysadmin to DevOps
1) Having a clear list of problems which are within my control. 2) Redirect 'nervous energy' into solving just those problems. 3) Sleep, nutrition. Helped me.
So is this a not-broken keyboard design? I have the (now) previous-generation Air, and need a keyboard repair.

Would be seriously tempted to just buy a new one if I was confident the keyboard wasn't absolute garbage. Typing on it was fine when it worked, but it double-spaces, and a couple of the other keys are now wonky.

Never had a keyboard die on me before this -- Mac or otherwise.
* Jaynes's
Organize a Full-remote Workshop (or any event)
Going outside could also be detrimental to your health. Humans are not so weak they can’t stay inside for a few weeks. Please do us all a favor and take this seriously. I promise you won’t die from staying inside for 3 weeks.
Deploying Hyper-V VDI: A How-To Guide
Do you mean the start menu? I never open it, just use Win + number for pinned apps.

Windows is not perfect but it excels in many regards nowadays and the last years, Macs were really expensive and risky. They were too expensive to just have a fall-back machine lying around (if you make serious money with you gear, every hour counts). I have 3x 2.5lb notebooks here, if one needs to be sent in, so what.

Edit: just opened it but there are no ads... what do you mean?
Layoffs in the US running at almost a million a day
It's meant to be used with WMs that can handle tabs (i3, sway, xmonad, ...)
As a terminal, it is blazingly fast and scale well with hdpi screens, without all the feature creep, in short, it suckless.
Crowd-sourcing a producable design should help everyone. There are some assumptions (that I believe to be correct) that longer supply chains will be somewhat unreliable, so arranging local production is probably better for the patients anyway. I think there's inspiration in the Italians who were printing ventilator valves en masse.
The tests suggested in Italy also use a 500 mg per day dose, see article linked to here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22616404
It's the best thing to happen to photons since the big bang.

Ok... but they actually said "The biggest thing to happen to the cursor since point and click." What, being on an iPad?
Now give me a 14.1 inch MacBook Pro with this keyboard, 32 or 64GB of ram and 8 real cores.

... I think though this new MacBook Air is going to be my next portable
My wallet will hurt but damn this makes my 2018 keyboard folio look like a joke, much like how “a phone, an iPod, an Internet communication device” made previous phones look like a joke.
> I don't think this is correct. Because as you can see the spot price of silver has gone down, the price for silver coins has gone up by more than double the amount the spot price has declined. Meaning, people are buying silver out of fear.

> My guess is that this is the product of silver prices being driven by industry much more than gold prices are. We're looking at a supply side decline here which means a decline in demand for the things that go into making other things.

> Gold is far less useful industrially than silver.

For whatever reason, there is a common misconception regarding the usefulness of gold. Commonly on any of the popular investment shows and websites, you will see various people stating "gold has no use" without any measure of a qualifying statement.

My perception is that these people likely mean "gold has no use [as an asset]." The degree to which this is correct is not what I'm trying to address, but rather the literal interpretation of the statement that could be read as "gold has [absolutely] no use."

Here is the intro from the article on gold at geology.com[1], which doesn't have a dog in this fight:

> What is Gold?

> Native gold is an element and a mineral. It is highly prized by people because of its attractive color, its rarity, resistance to tarnish, and its many special properties - some of which are unique to gold. No other element has more uses than gold. All of these factors help support a price of gold that is higher than all but a few other metals.

In case you missed that sentence in there:

> No other element has more uses than gold.

[1] https://geology.com/minerals/gold.shtml
But regardless of how much you practice, not all key combinations can physically be performed at the same speed, because some keys are easier to reach than others. So again, either you adjust all your typing to a constant rhythm and waste speed potential on the faster combinations, or you just accept variable speeds.

The comparison with musical instruments doesn't make that much sense because in music, the constant rhythm is required to stay in time. This requirement doesn't exist in typing.
I think you are right, but it likely reflects the node we sit on in the internet.

If this were not hacker news, but some german equivalent in the german language, I am sure you would find a german focused effort.

I think it makes sense that most of the efforts would be local (someone has to distribute and man the ventilator). The global effort should be focused on design, and best practices.
What is the size of the app market for iPad software? Does this device matter to that market?

I still feel like my own iPad usage is mostly locked by a weak software ecosystem, and while the hardware is impressive, it still seems like complete overkill for the current ecosystem.

I want to use it more, but the software for things I would have expected on the iPad, like 3D design, music production, etc, are often limited, either by software or connectivity issues.

I've gotten more use out of my Linux notebook running a Windows VM. Which surprised me.

I just get the feeling that the only people really making serious money on iPad apps are games, which are probably just ports of phone apps.
What's your plan now, given this news?
The other one was submitted later according to the ID. Could one move the comments from there to here?
But then they would be doing what the rest of the world does. Their artificial obstacles to straightforward functionality make them more money. And we pay to get solutions to problems we would never have, were we to use sane technology.
You can get custom sheet metal work, if you're willing the pay the price and possibly are in the right industry. Sheet metal, welding, carpentry, pipefitters, and pretty much every trade are in massive demand in shipbuilding/repair.

NNSY fails a significant portion of welder applicants just because they can't lay a proper weld. They pay... a lot of money.
No, as a customer, I want CHOICE. People act as if having a headphone jack vs using bluetooth headphones are completely mutually exclusive things. I sometimes find downright aggression towards people who still want to keep a headphone jack. A laptop is a general computing device - maybe I'll want to plug in my fully working wired headphones, maybe I'll want to use bluetooth ones. Who knows. But I hate it when companies take this choice away from me, because "progress" or some other nonsense. And then you go online and people say that you must be weird for wanting to keep the jack around - why? What's bothering you so much about having an extra port that you can but don't have to use?
Motherboard
the B suffix parts are still mobile parts. looks like they clock almost the same as their desktop counterparts, so I'll admit I stand partially corrected.
Incorrect. It is not the standard desktop version of Photoshop, it is something quite inferior and there are many online articles discussing the differences.
We are in a pandemic and this won’t be the last. Gov’ts and society are scrambling to contain the virus, save lives, economy and society. Pandemics sow seeds of mistrust among neighbors, xenophobia and society starts falling apart. Be kind, compassionate and constructive if you can help it. This is about self-preservation. If there was ever a case for “move fast, break things”, this is it. Your location data is already whored out to target you in every which way. We have tremendous data and tech capabilities. We should absolutely use them to effectively track and quarantine the contagion. For me the threat of terrorism and Patriot act was bullshit reason to erode our rights and liberties, but this is different. We should absolutely revisit these encroachments on privacy by out gov’t in a post-mortem and legislate accordingly.

When it comes to gov’t, I share a healthy dosage of mistrust. This is one of the reasons I support the second amendment. But remember that the gov’t are of the people and for the people. It is THE institution to defend our individual selves against threats we can’t individually battle. As Michael Lewis puts it, we have got to stop gutting the gov’t due to reactionary fear-mongering and mistrust. We are only robbing ourselves and our children of their future. This is a reason to feel patriotic for me.
People not taking this seriously and staying inside is what causes this to spread. Putting yourself in risky situations does no good to anyone either and just creates a better environment for a virus to propagate.
> What most people use a computer for these days are not what we use a computer for.

That's why I'm posting this on HN and not Facebook or something.

Everything you mention could be done on a smartphone - no need for this allegedly "computer replacing" iPad.

The people at my company who use Excel absolutely could not do what they do on an iPad.
How much RAM does it have and how many cores? I can't find any mention.
Edit: Less sarcasm.

Are you suggesting the whole world should focus on solving the COVID-19 problem in the US before solving it in their own countries? Or did I misinterpret your comment?
> For example Google does live transcribing of the conversation on meet/hangouts.

Can you provide a link to this? I was unaware of it and can't find the feature. I did find that Hangouts Meet offers video recording...
Unlike most other nations. I wish more people knew this and the impact it has. maybe we wouldn't see Trump win again then (as we will).
Ok, misguided idealism. Sure, same old, same old.
Will either of those let me compile my code?
Cmd + . actually acts as Escape key on iPadOS. It’s not a replacement for a physical escape key, but I don’t find it too hard to adopt.
How long would it realistically take for Apple to pivot to AMD? If things continue as they have been, it's hard to imagine the "premium brand" sticking with Intel.

Of course they might just shift everything to A series chips instead.
I’m sure they’re experts in this area and definitely an authority on the matter. SF has a massive homeless problem, how “happy” do you think that virus is in the city atm?
Typically build flows don’t mount the js with volumes they embed it in the image. I’m not cognizant enough of the trade offs to know why.
Apple makes nice laptops, but I am not interested until the come out with a convertible option. I bought a HP Spectre a couple of years ago and I am very happy with it. The convertible option is very nice for traveling in coach.
What does the weird conspiracy theorist dude have to do with this decision by Apple?