skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Speaking from personal experience, a bad job can leave your "passion" somewhat lacking. I think if you asked anyone I work with today, they would definitely describe me as passionate. There are indicators that I am doing well there. I can't agree more with this article. I absolutely hate doing tech interviews. I can not code under pressure. Even in the most high pressure situations with an outage or huge customer issue, I always take a step back, think, and try to see what else might be affected before doing anything.

I hate tech interviews so much, that I never do them. I mostly do unconsciously what this article lays out. I would say personally I've experienced better than average hires if I happen to be positive on the person, doing what this article suggests in an interview. I have missed good people (was overridden) and have failed tons of tech interviews where I thought I would be an excellent fit on the other qualifications.

You'll have to ask my co-workers if I'm good, but they tell me I am.
No humor on HN allowed!
The headline is misleading IMO: Simply tallying up numbers of problems noted by a regulatory agency is useless from the perspective of judging safety. Remember when Microsoft tried to make Firefox look like a buggy piece of shit by simply noting how many open bugs they had in their Bugzilla?

The real problem from the article that is worrying (if true) is that the NRC is not always able to properly enforce compliance with their policies even when issues become known.
I don't get your example? You cite one use of the iPad and compared it to my statement. So this means I'm looking at it too narrowly? Elaborate please?
That it's never too late.

That building is the act of learning.

That past successes should be built upon and not run away from.
No offense, and I think your approach to the cipher sounds like a pretty good one, but why do so many people try to self-diagnose with Asperger's?

Pretty sure there are clinically-accepted criteria for it that go beyond "nerdy and slightly awkward".
The NSA isn't a law enforcement agency. Rightly or wrongly, US intelligence agencies seem to have a rather different set of rules these days than the rest of us are following, including most law enforcement. Bottom line is if they're wanting to use it to convict you of a crime they'll need a warrant for it (before most judges, at least).

If you're worried about NSA (llegal) spying in general, presumably the carriers retaining the data only makes it a bit easier for them. Since the info will need to be traveling around the network while you're active, they could easily just intercept that like they intercepted the voice calls.
Ver La Reina Del Sur Capitulo 22
I am getting down votes for this?! WTF? Look at the domain name and understand the original post, before downvoting! Think and then act!
Yeah, I think it is more phonetic shorthand than any kind of cypher. Unfortunately, it's a long shot that we'll be able to get any insight into it without knowing more about the victim's personal characteristics or habits.
Hmm. I had a very different experience. Most of the Google code I've seen them release is very, very high quality, like the Guava libraries: http://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries/
How do you pronounce Git?
"if a town wants to pool their money and pay to build out infrastructure that should be legal"

If people want to pool their own money together, they can. The only thing this bill prevents is the government from forcing an individual to pay for something.

Even if every individual was morally obligated to pay for something that the town wants (which is not the case), providing services is not the proper role of government.
"Saying you're fat because you eat too much is like saying you're an alcoholic because you drink too much. It's true but it doesn't say anything about how to solve the problem and it mixes up cause and effect"

I think you're really close to getting at the root of this problem right here. Fundamentally, we're talking about a behavioral compulsion here - people are literally getting addicted to food. Fructose is the substance that's hijacking the brain's reward system. A particular individual's susceptibility to obesity is very likely set up by the same factors that function in other addictions, whether chemical (as in alcoholism) or behavioral (as in gambling) - namely, dysfunctional family systems, psychological trauma, stress, etc. If this is, in fact, what's really going on then the solution is to (A) treat obesity as an addiction and (B) limit the proliferation of fructose in the food supply.
The best developer you can follow on github is yourself.
I agree - I just need to get more stuff up there!
Or are designed to get hot. Very High Temperature Reactors (VHTR) such as the pebble bed reactor design are much simpler than current designs and cool by natural circulation, the don't rely on control rods, coolant pumps, or other active systems that can fail. China are prototyping them, and research is going on elsewhere as well.
How does it compare to Safari on iPhone?
...is part of journalism. FTFY

And it most definitely is.
Unfortunately the constraints it sets make community fiber projects much less attractive. Should communities be forbidden from building out water mains or roads, because they might compete with the private version?

It's not clear to me that I'd want fiber to be government owned and operated in general. But neither is it obvious that cheap government fiber is bad. Aren't local communities the perfect place to experiment?
No warrant required. It's argued that this is transactional data, necessary to do business, so it's free for the taking.

This is the case that says so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Maryland

And these are the laws that allows it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECPA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act

Somewhat unrelated, but under current law (the two above) they can read your emails without warrant too, but this was a big step: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/breaking-news-eff-vict...
Haha, pen.is. Very funny! (so now even the morons get it)
While at my last job I was tasked with being apart of the interview process. My favorite question was "how do you keep up with web technology and trends? (web development)" and I was surprised at how many people had no answer for that simple question.

My response to my manager was "this dude wont work"
Mozilla to drop support for embedding browser in other applications
I agree that Google has a terrible recruitment process for internships. The first year I applied, I made it past both "technical interviews" and had a "host interview" scheduled, only to have it cancelled. My recruiter said he was pretty sure I'd get another, but I never did.

The second year (last year), my experience was similar, except this time I bugged my recruiter pretty much every other week until I had a host interview (got TWO of them cancelled on me but finally the third one actually happened) and I got the job.

Despite the terrible process, it is an absolutely amazing place to work. Everything you've heard is true: the food is amazing, the work atmosphere is amazing, the people are geniuses. Also, the compensation is absolutely absurd for undergraduate interns (last year it was $69,600/yr prorated to $1338/wk, and this year they bumped it up to $80,000/yr prorated to $1538/wk, with a $3500 lump sum relocation stipend on top of that. I know it's even higher for grad interns but I don't know the exact numbers).

Despite the admittedly awful process (easily the worst I've been through), it was absolutely worth it to me and I'd recommend anyone stick with it and hope you get lucky like I did. It really does come down to luck whether or not you get a host interview once you've passed your two technical interviews.
This is a fair point. I make a point of not asking "CS exam" questions, but I do expect candidates to be familiar with fairly common computer science concepts. (Not-an-Example: In my own interviews I was asked about things like O-notation, and I have run into many, many programmers who don't know what this is.)

I think a question talking about the Django templating system when the interviewee mentions they use Django is fair game, though; and questions that revolve around 'here's a real world problem I want to do with a string, can you write a quick algorithm' are ok, but then I do things like the Greplin programming challenge for fun and I'm not even an engineer =(
Content and Context Analysis Engine: Some Questions
Hi Folks

What is the fundamental difference between these two kind of analysis. For the sake of simplicity let us consider a piece of text written in English.

As I see it, they are both joined at the hip. Because, to analyse the context of a text we need to know what is being said. And to understand what is being said, context has to be understood.
eg I love palm (palm as in hand, palm as in trees, or palm as in the gadget)

What are your thoughts on it?

P.S: Can you give me some links/papers/articles on the algorithm behind these kind of analyses??
NASA to Stream First Mercury Photos
A very candid self-analysis. Thank you.
'Spiderman' Alain Robert scales Burj Khalifa in Dubai
A tautology is when I say something that asserts its own truth. I don't believe that to be a tautology.

I don't think I said anything about calling back to the interpreter. I merely meant to imply that the efficiency might not be as good as that of a statically compiled language.

There is a large implementation difference between an interpreter and a compiler. It goes far beyond 'efficiency.'

In an interpreter, generally, you are interpreting a data-structure and dispatching based on the symbols in that data-structure to do various things. The advantage of the interpreter is that you don't have to compile (you just have to tokenize/parse). Every function call and value dereference requires interpretation of this parsed structure. This means that for every function call you have to do some sort of lookup, and your flow control constructs (like if) are done by manipulating your position in the data-structure.

In a compiler, you are operating at a much lower level, having already interpreted the data-structure, and transformed what you would have interpreted as a data-structure into a machine code representation of itself. Instead of manipulating a position in a data-structure to interpret the code, you use the program counter (machine code jmp instructions). In certain situations, you can prove things about the code that is being compiled, leading to more efficient code (similar to what one might do with a static compiler).

In the example above, the interpreter might look up the proper function by finding the correct class object in a hash table, and then finding the pointer to the function.

In a compiler, it might dynamically recompile a dispatch function (when you add an object that implements that method), and then simply dispatch based on a case statement of 'object type' (something more sophisticated is likely possible as well). The second way of handling it would likely be much more efficient, even in the face of dynamically changing classes.

If you allow type hints in your compiler, you can prove even more things about various pieces of your program, meaning that, for example, you might be able to do straight up integer math in machine code (add, imul, sub, ash, etc) rather than having to go through a 'generic math' dispatch.

There is a lot of interesting 1980s-early 1990s literature on efficient implementation of dynamically compiled languages.

There are number of smalltalk, scheme, and common lisp compilers that are good examples of this technique (and proof of my claims!)

It is a fascinating subject and I highly recommend reading about it.
(The Henry Baker archives might be a good start).
Well, it's still up after 8 hours, so apparently there was some server-side checking as well
Yeah, keep downvoting me and don't even have the curtesy to write a comment as to why!
Ah, that is brilliant. Definitely way easier to work with than random numbers and/or TXT records.
No idea what it will be when he starts it, it almost doesn't matter - but by the time he is done it will probably be awesome.

Guys like Ev just need to start with something, they are adaptable enough to find what works. Put him in a room with a dozen people, $5M and let it simmer for a few years.
Now I want to open an office in Pittsburgh so I can hire edw519.
Seems to me you just shouldn't ask typical "CS problems". The problem with those is that a positive result doesn't necessarily mean that the candidate knows anything. It could be that they've just interviewed so many times that they know a few common answers to memorize.

I still think asking coding questions is extremely important. Programming is one job where you can actually test skill in the interview (unlike management for example, where you mostly have to rely on personality, work history, and references). I don't know why you woulnd't take advantage of that opportunity.

As for culture fit, obviously you need to do that too, but that's somewhat orthogonal to what else you ask about in the interview.
Amazon on Cloud Player: we don't need no stinkin' licenses
Meg Whitman Hooks Part-Time Gig With Kleiner Perkins Post-Campaign
" that charges reasonable prices, based on hard work, and doesn't engage in any trickery, "

How is buying low and selling high 'trickery'?
Ask HN: When Considering Incubators, What Do You Want to Know?
I've seen a bunch of questions surrounding incubators on HN lately as well as a plethora of advice, answers, and information. At Sparkmuse, we're considering creating a library of information about the popular incubators and would like to know if you'd find it useful and, if so, what information you'd like to have.
Ratings from startups who have participated in the program
Ratings from investors who get leads from incubators
Personal experiences from being in a program
Information about specializations of the incubator
General information about the incubator: investment vs equity taken, length of program, location etc
> I think a question talking about the Django templating system when the interviewee mentions they use Django is fair game, though

I agree, but it was the only good one I could find in the article.
You might be interested in www.reddit.com/r/keto
Thanks, considering it - do you know of a list of 2010 MassChallenge startups?
My current system is:

1) Simple programming challenge (< 30 minutes) by email. To see if they can actually write good code. Resume/age/experience/location mostly disregarded.

2) Casual discussion-style interview to get to know how they think and behave.

3) Short term contract with a predefined project (< 3 months) to see how they work over time.

4) Full time hire with salary + equity.
Webservers can handle a big OS. The hardware is typically over specced as it is. You might find some utility in shrinking/streamlining the OS for embedded or mobile.
I was a $50,000 winner in MassChallenge 2010 and it's a great organization. I've written a few blog posts on my experiences there. Hope they are helpful:

7 Startup Lessons Learned as a MassChallenge Finalist - http://bit.ly/cojZkt

How to Create a Killer MassChallenge Application - http://bit.ly/ecwRxV

How to Make it as a MassChallenge Finalist - http://bit.ly/gLT5ne
http://masschallenge.org/finalists/2010
Disclaimer: I'm not downvoting you but I believe you are being downvoted because people thought the original joke was offtopic and not all that funny. I mean, are you seriously defending the honor of a penis joke here? Don't take it personally. I know it's hard sometimes... (almost no pun intended)
I'm looking forward to an API that lets third parties add files to your Cloud Drive. Buy music, get it in your Cloud Drive. Buy a netbook, get the restore CD image in your Cloud Drive. Buy a DVD, get it in your Cloud Drive, etc. Amazon seems to be thinking about this in terms of "when you buy music from your phone it ends up in Cloud Drive", but what I want is for every bit of data I ever pay for to end up here. Because upload speeds are super-slow: it would take hours for me to upload that restore CD. But downloads are fast. So do the uploads Somewhere Else once, and let everyone else download it from their Cloud Drive.
Feel free to email me also with any questions andy [at] rentabilities [dot] com
There's a text reflow option in the preferences.
I'm a lot more interested in how someone breaks down an architectural problem than I am in how well they can implement heap sort on a whiteboard. The closer the interview is to real coding the more you learn.

Of course, github is the real resume now.
For the love of god..."make nuclear power safe"?

There have been...what, three nuclear plant failures EVER? Ignoring Chernobyl (which was caused by political pressure on the operators of one of the earliest plants ever built) there have been a few hundred deaths attributable to nuclear energy. Compare that on a GW / fatality basis to coal mines, hydro plants, etc, and nuclear power is clearly the safest option around.

As to Fukushima...the fifth most powerful earthquake ever recorded went off a few dozen miles away with a total energy release of something like 600 million Hiroshima bombs. This caused tidal waves up to 30 feet high that rolled almost halfway around the world. Despite all that, the total effect was a thermal explosion and some radioactive steam was vented. Yes, it's bad, but it's hardly a good reason to give up the best and safest form of energy known.
The only hiring process I have found to work for developers is to sit down and work on real code together.

This gets to the heart of the matter, and you very quickly feel out someone's knowledge, ability, and most importantly, how well they collaborate on a problem. Because in a startup you will need collaboration, and likely under the highest stress moments you've seen in your life.

I also feel like this gives applicants a much better opportunity to learn about their possible future company and coworkers, and whether they themselves would like the fit. If you have not done this sort of interview, even if you have never pair programmed, try it out. It's very effective.

What I'm still trying to learn, is what screening process to use ahead of this. Sadly, you can't invite everyone for an on site day long interview. The best I've come to is to look at what applicants have made on their own time or alternately how they talk over the phone about topics and problems they're excited about. Resumes are nearly useless.
I've seen his driver's licence.

I also have a picture of him walking my dog.
Great experience with Hacker News Community
I haven't downvoted you, and usually don't reply to posts like this, but I think that making posts to complain about getting downvoted is just encouraging it.
As did Apple.
Perhaps you're thinking about luck wrong: of course he did things, but people who are looking for credit are probably more likely to make wrong moves than people who are willing to admit that not everything is in their hands.

Luck is way, way more important than most like to admit.
I was only arguing against this statement from your post: "I am not aware of any evidence that exercise on its own actually works for weight loss..."

I'm not disputing that the obese need both diet and exercise to reach a healthy weight (that's pretty easy to see, just by looking at the Harris Benedict equation), I'm just making you aware of evidence that exercise on it's own does work for weight loss.

As for whether 11lbs of fat loss is significant or not, I guess that's mainly a question of where you draw the line for "significant". If you want to label anything less than 20lbs in 6 months "not terribly significant", be my guest.

Also, jogging 4x/week (what the paper described as "high intensity") is not a "large exercise load".
I'm pretty sure the book actually spells it correctly ("you're").
'Cree.py' Social Engineering Tool Pinpoints A Person's Physical Location
The actual dollar values of the exits obtained by the startups from that incubator, as opposed to factor of 5-10 exaggerations from unsourced articles on TechCrunch?
Generally, on the server-side, you parameterize the query. Depending on the server-side language, a normal SQL query that would read SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE lastName = 'Smith' would be converted to something like SELECT * FROM myTable WHERE lastName = @lastnameparam. Then in code, you'd supply the value of @lastnameparam as 'Smith'.

It depends on the language, but this is what you'd do in .NET, for example. In this case, the framework does the work for you by encoding the value of lastnameparam (it makes sure that whatever is supplied to lastnameparam isn't read as SQL).
I never really understood why companies don't just take a non-trivial real problem that they have run into during development. Just ask the candidate to talk it out, see if they are able to at least get on their feet toward a solution or an idea of possible solutions.

I've never hired anyone, but I can tell you that I could write a linked list in a handful of languages. I can also tell you that it doesn't say much about what I know (or perhaps more importantly, don't). Problem solving is what is important, more important than ability to write code on a whiteboard.
I have no idea why nobody mentions that copy&paste in forms isn't implemented.

It's of little use for me without that.
That would certainly be nice to know but most of those numbers are kept under wraps for various reasons.
Radiation Dosage Chart
Why not pair on whatever you would be working on anyway. I usually have to solve many architectural problems every day but honestly never had to implement a heap sort all my life. So there should be ample opportunity for an interviewee to show his architecture-fu
For those who haven't seen the greatest anime series of all time, Neon Genesis Evangelion, "Operation Yashima" is the name of a plan to drain power from all of Japan to fuel a giant weapon to defeat an invader.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x659tv_roe-1-0-operation-ya...

http://wiki.evageeks.org/Episode_06

http://forum.evageeks.org/viewtopic.php?t=10924
The Best Report Ever on Media Piracy
Watch Argentina vs Costa Rica live stream
Bitter for 1-bit "bleeps"!
I worked for a German startup too and our main problem was not vetting interviewees but finding people who want to interview at all. In the five year history of the company I think only one single person was hired who was not already friends with someone at the company.

Other people just never applied. I remember manning the booth at one of those college campus events and it was very lonely. I probably talked to three students that day. Nobody followed up with us. I even had the distinct feeling that students avoided eye-contact with us and made beelines for the booths of the big established companies.

In the end, our hiring interview process for interns was 'do you want to work for us? yes? you're in' and for full-time applicants it was simply non-existent. I think in the last three years we did not interview a single person.

I often wondered why that is but I have never found a good answer. In the end it worked out for us. The company was acquired by Google.

Still, I would have liked to have some applicants and interviews once in a while because I keep reading so much about them and I wanted to practice being an interviewer to avoid pitfalls as described in the article.
Lead Developer for Petascale Connectomics (MIT)
* Aesthetically speaking, I can't stand irssi.

* It just works

* Inline image viewing

* You can customize anything via Propane[1]'s custom javascript support.

1. http://propaneapp.com/