skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think that the coding challenges can be helpful if done correctly. If the challenge is clearly communicated on how complete they are expecting it to be and how it might be judged. But I did have an experience with a "homework assignment" that hit on most of the bad points outlined in the author's article.

This was not specifically a coding challenge as I was applying for a Systems Engineering role at a software company. The homework assignment was basically here is a fake product, please provide a requirements spec, user manual, and test procedure associated with the product.

My first problem was with the notion of doing the systems engineering backwards and creating requirements specs from a product.

The second was with the conflicting communication about how much time and effort should be put in. The actual homework assignment itself said "We anticipate that this exercise should take no more than a few hours". Whereas the email I got from the recruiter said "They are looking for extreme detail here, and the ‘it should only take a few hours’ instruction is kind of BS. It’s OK if you don’t get it back for a week or so. Winning submissions from my candidates have been 7 and 11 pages long, I believe. They really want someone to go overboard with the exercise".

So after putting a lot of work in (because I could, and did not have a family at the time), the only response I got was basically "Nope, you didn't get the job". And I know that employers have a lot of candidates and there is a disproportionate time spent by the employee versus the employer, but it would have been nice to at least receive 1 or 2 sentences of feedback that may have helped me in the future.

To a point made by someone further down in the comments, the exercise may be a good way to judge if you would be a good fit at the company. So based on my experience I am probably glad I didn't get that job.
What's interesting is that (mostly impractical at the moment) attacks on biometrics authentication mechanisms end up summarizing that category to also "something you have", rather than "something you are" -- not that it negate its particular utility.
They should block all or none, otherewise it gets kind of like a tool for them to manipulate the public opinion.
It is "allowed" because everyone has so far benefited tremendously.

It is of course possible to invest in China, most large Western companies have, and it is profitable.

We've also all benefited from the huge pool of Chinese cheap labour.

China has also obviously benefited through an incredible economic development, which actually also benefits Western economies.
Well, counterexample would be modern C compilers. They break old code left and right and while people occasionally complain about it the compiler authors have strong support in the form of C standard and generally do not budge under the complaints. Occasionally a special flag is added for exceptional cases (hello -fwrapv -fno-strict-aliasing), but that is more like adding new feature to api than staying bug-compatible.
Just as a data point, Wechat exists in the Chinese App store and has its own payment system. So people and businesses can buy and sell using Wechat in China on the iPhone while being in the Apple App store and avoiding the 30% Apple cut.
Can't speak for the OP, but I used a rig with three CDROMS on it to rip my wife's CD collection to the first iPod.

It took months, but would have taken months longer if I only had one drive.
I put together a nice diagram of this in my “history of Unicode” talk. The specific slide is at:

https://speakerdeck.com/alblue/a-brief-history-of-unicode?sl...

There’s link to the video recording in the comments if you’re interested.
How to add Schema.org markup to Yii2 pages
I like this one, similar to another one I like. Don't connect the dots that aren't there.
On a teacher's salary? Not likely.
this makes me mad. why the f do you need to party right now. get your shit together and actually care about something other than yourself. pathetic.
“Security through obscurity” means something like e.g. “uses a bespoke unpublished crypto algorithm, in the hopes that nobody has put in the effort to exploit it yet.”

Usually this is a poor choice vs. going with the published industry standard, because crypto is hard to get right, and people rolling their own implementations usually screw it up, making life much easier for dedicated attackers than trying to attack something that people have been trying and failing to breach for years or decades.

Software makers for example typically don’t publish the technical details of their anti-piracy code. But this usually doesn’t prevent software that people care about from being “cracked” quickly after release.
Other apps like Spotify, Kindle, all the music streaming and audiobook etc.? Oh wait, they are not booted.

> Other apps would get booted because they don't work without navigating elsewhere.

No. "Reader apps" get an exception to this.
Wow this is why my next phone will be an iphone, so sick of apps in Android play store pestering me to rate their app after completing an action in the app or forcing me to turn on location services when I can easily enter a zip code instead.
Magicimport.py: Python code that magically resolves its own dependencies
So the New York Times cost him his job?
Sure, it adds a little bit of “security” like the camouflage on tank example, or the prey jumping. Those examples are poor however, because — unlike changing default ports, adding knocking, obfuscating code - these examples are extremely low maintenance/cheap, and come with essentially no downside.

What’s missing here is the discussion of tradeoffs. I fail to see how e.g., requiring port knocking adds enough security to justify the annoyance. Changing the default port, maybe, but given how easily it’s detected anyway, the cons still outweigh the pros IMO.
Chrome. Only because of the add ons, and seamless linking to your google account.
... wait, how is what you’re suggesting different from zoos?
Not automatically, but if you connect multiple nodes into a cluster, when you spawn a process you can select which node it will be spawned on. Additionally, once the nodes and processes are running you can send messages across nodes to different processes using the same method you use for processes on a single node. [0] Shows an example of communication across nodes, as well as some preliminary material that would be helpful if you don't know Erlang.

I mostly learned Erlang from Joe Armstrong's book [1], though the first edition. I'm confident the second edition is as good as the first. Learn You Some Erlang [2] is a great free (also available for purchase, but free online) book.

[0] https://erlang.org/doc/getting_started/conc_prog.html

[1] https://pragprog.com/titles/jaerlang2/programming-erlang-2nd...

[2] https://learnyousomeerlang.com/
Lets make this more exciting: the developers of XMR offer 7,440 XMR x 2 to anyone who could break Monero and Elizabeth Stark offer 62.5 X 2 BTC for Lightning, and XMR and Lightning could path the code ...let the bidding wars begin!!
Slightly OT: I may be a bit unfair picking on Tesco as it turns out the pulp used to make egg cartons has run out because of the demand for eggs from the covid home-baking upswing, they do plan to switch back.

But only because the last time they pulled this stunt back in 2011 or so claiming it was eco-friendly to use "recyclable" plastic it blew up in their face (most of which isn't recycled) .
It depends on your ADT implementation, but sometimes yes. E.g. Rust makes a pretty good case for not needing exceptions, with the `?` operator, implicit "into" conversions, and a `match` operator that allows returning from the func and not just from the match branch's closure.

In a language without some or all of those (or without ADTs at all, you could have them just for exceptions for instance), ADT-matching to many specific types can get pretty onerous... or you need to do an equivalent to the "catch Exception -> throw RuntimeError" safety-erasing nonsense that this article is rightfully claiming is a problem. Shoving error-types into a separate bucket though often leaves you with a single "return" type, possibly also removing generics entirely, which is trivial to deal with in the happy path in all cases. Optimizing code for the happy path is one of the reasons people like exceptions, so that's potentially significant.

---

edit: ah, no, IMO a large part of the point of exceptions at all (checked included) is that the caller can ignore it by forwarding it implicitly, punting it up the chain without effort. Checked largely just makes sure it's visible in your type signature so you cannot do that silently, unlike runtime exceptions / panics / etc. ADTs typically require handling immediately, exceptions are the opposite of that.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/1/21203630/apple-amazon-prim...

> Apple on Wednesday confirmed the existence of a program for streaming video providers that allows those platforms to bypass its standard 30 percent App Store fee when selling individual purchases, like movie downloads and TV show rentals. The program first became public earlier today when Amazon updated its Prime Video iOS and Apple TV apps to allow in-app purchases for the first time. It is not clear how long the program has existed, but there are at least two other providers, Altice One and Canal+, currently participating, Apple confirmed.
Yup, lets let the war on fiat begin, the crypto hydra has many heads!
You can use ethernet connections whenever possible so you aren't broadcasting as much info.

Not very helpful, but you can also reduce your wifi power and/or place to in the basement (if you have one) to limit the range (physical attack surface). You can also schedule the wifi to turn off during hours that you don't need it (11pm-6am?). This will reduce the amount of time someone could monitor/attack via wifi. It also reduces your exposure to RF, if you're into that.
I do the cold water on face and the shower thing on an almost-daily basis. I mean, I shower daily in the morning because it feels good and I prefer not to alienate the people I interact with over the course of my day.

Since my daily activities sometimes involve outside work in a tropical climate, I found myself needing the occasional evening shower. I also do a lot of work in the evening, working with computers instead of plants, and eventually I came to notice that I performed that work much better, with less resistance, on days when I had the evening shower.

I added the shower to my evening routine, and it is helpful regardless of whether or not I did any labor-type work.

The water-on-face thing is a habit I picked up this year, and I never connected it with the shower routine. But thinking about it now, it seems clear that it may well be. I do the cold water routine more frequently on days I feel overwhelmed, and it seems obvious in retrospect.

I appreciate your insights; thank you.
the stuff you read on books, I learned at the dinner table, and have a lot more context than you'll ever have. You're picking the wrong fight, trying to protect monsters because they made savy investments in the past. Not worth it man.
Disrupt. Whatchu disrupting home girl? Ain't nobody disrupting the market anymore. it's a normal to "disrupt" nuthin special hunny
What I love (sarcasm) is companies that just need basic line of business apps, but want you to complete a coding challenge navigating graphs and trees in constant, nlogn time, etc.

I find it hilarious and often ask, "Can you explain to me how solving this challenge applies to what you do day to day?"

They say.... "That's a really good question..."

Then I watch them squirm as they have no idea how to explain a real world application beyond a generic, sometimes hard problems come up...

Sure... Then give me an example.

I don't mind taking your test, but if your team doesn't need those skills you're wasting your time and mine by cargo-culting this time-consuming style of recruitment.
Those are all mega apps. If you try that as a small indie dev it won't work that way.
> The clerk at the store went off on this surprisingly lengthy and heated diatribe about how SCSI was mediocre technology, and how nobody in their right mind should ever want anything SCSI ever again.

vs What in 1990? Pray tell. Parallel IDE? I'd have laughed in his face if he said that.

The biggest problem with SCSI was always the fact that you had to understand termination or the bus you built wasn't going to work.

The second biggest problem with SCSI was always the fact that it was more expensive. Cables were especially expensive, but controllers weren't cheap either.
You're confusing their LEGAL status with their MORAL obligations.

Just because there's an easy way for a collective of people to absolve their moral responsibilities by getting a little certificate that says "We're a corporation" doesn't make it right. It's just a legal accident, a mummers farce, and you defending it is morally reprehensible too.

Worse still, it didn't used to be this way till some prat of an economist (probably American) starting saying so, and a bunch of people smelling easy money piled on. Companies used to care about their image, now their "care" about their shareholders (but actually their contractual bonuses and severance packages).
Yes, I see people fail at basics in interviews all the time. But I keep wondering how much of that is people being poorly qualified, and how much of it is interviews being poor indicators of true skill.

I've seen people barely sneak through technical interviews, whose subsequent performance justified the concerns I had at the time. I've seen others hired against my personal recommendation who turned out to be brilliant at their jobs.
"What do you do for work?" "Oh I just interview a lot, the pay isn't amazing but it is what it is"
> I can guarantee you your language skills will negatively impact your performance.

As it should.

If someone is a poor English speaker, at an English-speaking company, they absolutely should be penalized.

Not everyone is equal, was equal, nor will be. Some people are born blind too. Shouldn't we adjust our hiring practices for them too?
They'd probably say that this metric is descriptive, not prescriptive.
Apple Mask unboxing
The problem with security through obscurity is the false sense of security that it provides. This in itself can lead to vulnerabilities.

Regarding data obfuscation, for example:

- Can an average person differentiate between encrypted data and well-obfuscated data just by looking at it?

- Would it be reasonable for the average person to assume that obfuscated data is equally as "secure" as encrypted data?

- Might someone store and transmit "secure" data differently than normal data?
Wow way to go. Its a different world inside a company like Facebook. I've only ever worked for small struggling businesses. 9 years in and yet to break 100k.
The mutation rates are magnitudes different.
Regulating the app store isn't beneficial. They should be able to reject bad apps for being bad without having to go to court over it.

The problem is that they restrict the user from using any other app store. So then when they get it wrong there is nothing anybody can do. And then they have less incentive not to get it wrong, because it's much harder for them to lose users to a competitor, so then they prohibit things the user actually wants more often.
I mean, this could be a good idea.... But I'd rather just check into my hotel/airbnb and drop luggage off.. Even if I'm going somewhere for a day, why would I bring a huge suitcase in the first place? I'd say no thanks only because I don't want randos "keeping" my luggage.
Dixit would be more interesting here.

Dixit is a bunch of very different pictures and the goal is to say something about the card you've picked such that some of the other players will know which one it was but not all of them, your opponents are listening to your description and can pick from their own hands of cards. You get points for: Identifying the correct card based on the description when it isn't your turn; Playing a card which people mistook for the correct card when it isn't your turn; Some but not all other players guessing your card when it was your turn.

So that ends up being about shared experiences and culture, because if you share culture with someone you can allude to some element of the picture in a way that's completely opaque to everybody who doesn't share that culture, allowing the "in group" to identify your card while everybody else can't do better than luck.

For an AI there are two interesting challenges. Firstly, in "understanding" the pictures shown on the cards. It's not enough to be like "That's a cat" "That's a book" "That's a tree" you need somehow to compete with a human that thinks "Hmm, that's kinda like the Rapunzel story except it's a bird instead of a princess?" and "The dragon looks happy"

But then the AI also needs cultural context like a human player so it can try to judge good descriptions: "Happy Dragon" is obviously this card, "Cat" might be any of half a dozen cards, how about "I am your father" as a reference to the Cloud City scene that looks a bit like this picture - and so it can try to pick cards that match human descriptions to steal points that way.
What sort of "silent, invisible, no-opt-in tracking" does Apple allow?
It's not how the mass market book and (I assumw from your other link title) at least popular recording industries work, but it's how lots of the rest of the physical retail industries, including IP-based ones, work and have worked, and a big part of why (for instance), TSR (the original publishers of D&D), who sold IP-based products (including books) outside of the mass book trade was completely unprepared for the “success” of getting it's books into the mass book trade, where failing to adequately account for costs of remaindering almost drove them out of business before Wizards of the Coast bought them for the IP.
Why anti-authoritarians are diagnosed as mentally ill (2012)
Principles for Naming a Brand
Currently in NY making 150k with 10yoe at a non-tech company. Would jump ship in a heartbeat to SF for 300k, or 250k, or even 200k.
I thought heartbleed was a decent name. A callback to the heartbeat protocol

I think DROWN was kiiinda pushing it.
What a lame excuse. No vehicle should ship with laminate edge detailing from a DIY store to be used as a brace to hold a component in place. That's just poor design and a lazy fix to hit your numbers, plain and simple.
There will probably be more than one.

If it's truly a future paradigm, then we probably don't know enough of the details to explain it in adequately and it would just be theory. It might also use tech that we have not yet discovered. Many of these futuristic predictions change drastically or never come true. I'm still waiting on my flying car and robot maid...
I try to avoid things that could trigger them. If I do get triggered, I go for a run or do something active to get my mind at ease.
> I wouldn't want them to have copies of the video or pictures, and as I understand it those never leave the SD card.

I'm sure you know this, but in addition to the imagery being saved on the SD card, it is also streamed to your smartphone, which runs proprietary software and is connected to the internet.
What Forces Layout/Reflow
What kind of regulations? My understanding is that credit card processors have significant power to pick and choose which merchants they do business with. Mostly famous American Express rejected all adult websites: https://www.zdnet.com/article/amex-just-says-no-to-porn-site...

Regulating Apple like credit card processors will continue to allow Apple to set detailed rules on what payment processing Apple wants to do, which is the subject of this article.

The real issue is that in the real world the merchant can also choose not to do business with American Express and just accept say Visa and MasterCard. That's not currently a possibility on Apple's platforms.
In a zoo, we take an animal out of the wild, and keep it alive. Ideally breeding them as well.

In my suggestion, we tranquilize an animal, take a blood sample, and extract marrow from the hip. We then perform a full genome sequence on the blood, and freeze the marrow down, with compounds which vitrify the cells such that they can be revived at any point in the future.

We should do both. But the latter has advantages: the animal stays in the wild, it scales better, and the only ongoing input is a bit of energy to keep the cells cold.

We don't have the technology to print a whole genome from a file, but I expect we will. Stem cell cloning is well understood, and will only get better.

Doing this to as many individuals as possible will preserve genetic diversity. It's insurance, basically.
> You can buy anything, from anyone, with bitcoin. All it takes is two bitcoin users.

Bitcoin users are a tiny, tiny percentage of "anyone".
Long time ago I go the "Why is a manhole cover round?" at an interview. I prefaced that I heard this question before and followed up with 3-4 possible answers. The interviewer was still impressed.
Solution: take away some of the formal powers of management - for example the ability to assign resources on personal decisions. A manger wants X to happen so spends Y of her budget to hire a team to do it.

That is power.

Simply make all such decisions open, transparent and democratically elected - in other words have employees vote.

We live in a world where we value democracy but spend our working lives in autocratic dictatorships.

Yes Coase and efficient allocation, but really I think information revolution is changing that equation.

Democracy in companies now! Struggle brothers !
Why would you need key: value representation when (key value) works just as well?
Cannot agree more, there's this in the guidelines:

> Also avoid piling on to a category that is already saturated; the App Store has enough fart, burp, flashlight, fortune telling, dating, and Kama Sutra apps, etc. already. We will reject these apps unless they provide a unique, high-quality experience. Spamming the store may lead to your removal from the Developer Program.

I totally agree that there's enough of these types of apps, but you'll need to convince a reviewer that your "special" if you want to compete in that space. I'm torn between agreeing with Apple and being disgusted at the anti-competitive nature communicated. I just wonder if Apple uses this to say "oh, there's already enough find-my type apps" "oh, there's already enough music apps" "oh, there's already enough word processor apps" and you're left holding the bag of software you've spent the last year writing.
You just said that there's lots of valuable work that could be done, but your example of work that could be done is work isn't valuable enough to do unless software engineers get paid (in the SF Bay Area) notably less than a dental hygienist.

I like having clean teeth. If someone can make more as a dental hygienist, why on earth would it be valuable to society if they instead worked as a software engineer for less money?

If people won't work for 100k/yr as a software engineer, that means people capable of doing this work have found higher value things to do elsewhere. The higher salary elsewhere reflects the higher value produced doing something else.

This is one of many reasons why I'm so bewildered when people talk about a "shortage" of software engineers without considering the options available in other fields (fields that, perhaps, pay better and don't require taking bizarro whiteboard exams every time you change jobs).
I recall it was the mere fact that they had a pricing model at all when the competition made it clear that they would not attempt to derive any revenue from anything related to the web (e.g., running a web server, distributing a web client program)
No one wants piss water