skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
While every interviewer has different opinions on what should/should not be present, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not cargo culting, I'm complaining about receiving garbage.

Extreme length is commonly a sign that the person is too lazy to ever prune or clean up things. And my complaint about excessive length is "if they cannot bother to revisit it, why should I?"

I'm aware that every resume is not created from scratch just for me. Still, I should be able to create a guess as to who the person is, what they're looking for, and (generally) why they might be a good fit. If not, why am I reading their resume at all? What am I possibly getting out of it?

While updating resumes usually means adding, that doesn't have to mean that a 1/2 page discussion on tweaking spreadsheets for a law office in 1992 will stand there until retirement. Do I really need to see that someone has experience with Visual Studio 2010, 2008, 2005, 2003, 2000? How about every version of every Office product that they have ever used?

How about a skills section that lists 4 versions of MS DOS? Sure, there's a possibility we have a legacy system to update, but really, if you want to include that stuff, separate the (likely to be) relevant information so that I can find it easily without wading through crap like your Code Warrior Certification in 1995.

I'm not your mother and I'm not going to do the equivalent of cleaning your room just to find out if you might be worth a phone call.
haha, exactly. Mostly that's why I fail to treat these HR questions seriously. In our branch a similar cult would be companies blindly going social - without proper expertise and assets, not knowing what value exactly they want to bring, but it must be social, because everyone big does social. And in the end - they count followers and likes, but are clueless which data and how affects their business.
Commenting on Comments
You're not weird. Puzzles can definitely be fun, but, in my experience, it doesn't mean you're a lousy programmer if you can't solve one/some.

Everyone likes to use Google as the example of the elite programming company. I've read the books about them, used the products, followed their progress over the years. So, sure, a part of their big success is hiring the 'smartest' college grads.

However, I've also worked with Ph.D.'s and even interviewed them for positions lower than ones I've held (I have not yet finished college - some day...). And I can tell you that book smarts != execution smarts.

I feel the same way about puzzles. I have never used puzzles or asked 'small' one off programming questions. Instead I've always been interested more in grep'ing the concepts and if the personality is the proper fit. In my mind, anyone can open up a book and read about specifics about O(log n). But how does a person persist at solving a problem and how do they (can they?) change direction if their solution sucks?

I feel like I value creativity over anything and they can creatively solve a puzzle, cool. But if they can creatively solve a task on the system I'm building and are a great fit to the team, then better.
My bad...that had been in there and I must have deleted it accidentally. Now it's back in. Thanks for pointing that out.
Sites knocked offline by OpenDNS freeze on Google
That image is horrible. I could code up insertion sort pretty quickly. Trying to figure out what that image means though...
12 SF entrepreneurs challenging the healthcare status quo (CNN)
It's a little bit of both. What really happens is that you're looking at a moving target in terms of both inputs and outputs. Think of this like the early browser wars, where even a standard chunk of HTML could look different.

You can create an EPUB formatter that works to your satisfaction, but you've only coded it to work with that set of books. The next set of books may have different layout requirements, like padding between the text and the images.

Secondly, the epub world is evolving, and the readers that display the epubs all have their own interpretation. EPUB is simply HTML/CSS inside a .zip. e-readers are essentially browsers wrapped in their own chrome.

So, the real trick is to automate as much of the formatting as possible, but then have easy tools for the Author to make the final tweaks.
Candid Interview with Wattvision Founder (YC W09)
A bit of engineer's rough estimating:

System was built in 2003 - 8 years ago.
Assume moore's law of doubles every 2 years - expectation of 16x more powerful
Actual increase in performance - 22x in 1/4th the size

Given that it's then a quarter of the size of system X, that's an amazing increase in peak performance.

There's only one problem - that speed increase appears to owe a lot to the use of GPGPU. As I understand it, whilst research into GPGPU for HPC* is a hot area at the moment, the scale of the actual benefits it offers is still a matter of debate (especially when considering costs and power consumption).
I don't get the puzzle aversion. Sure, you can stare at someone's code as much as you want to but I don't think you can infer a lot about how their thought processes worked when they were writing it (a proper use of version control helps here but not much). You only see the outcome. You may say - I don't care how they think, I want the job done. Well, that would make sense if they were contracting on an self-contained project. But usually you hire someone to join a team, where how the process works is more important than the actual outcome. Especially whether or not the process is flexible and fits your workflow. So puzzles are good for that, especially that it's not about getting the right answer but approaching the problem. The reason they're abstract, which I agree sometimes crosses a line, is that leaving out the technical details of a problem makes sure that both candidates familliar with the technical details and those that are not have equal chances of doing well.

The problem with this post is that it puts "puzzles", "API quizzes" and "math riddles" into one category. I can see how one can be offended by an API quiz such as "what does X do in Y?", especially if they have a track record in Y or could just look it up on the Web if they didn't know. But math riddles? Puzzles? I'd actually be grateful that I don't have to deal with technical catches and can purely focus on a solution.

One thing to consider is that recruiting, especially at a larger scale, is about minimizing false positives rather than maximizing the collective value. Sure, someone good at puzzles might turn out to be an average engineer but a bad one? I don't think so. Whereas, I can see how someone with a huge pile of code on GitHub can get stuck in a critical situation where if they write unit tests or how they design their APIs is meaningless.
Can anyone explain why software developed by a government agency would not be in the public domain, once open?

And given that NASA has chosen to use a specific open source license, why a custom license and not one that is familiar to the community?

http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/opensource/nosa/
"Groupon, in fact, said in a June IPO filing that offering merchants more favorable terms may cut into its profits."

Does Groupon actually have any profits, or do they really mean "exacerbate its losses"?
Reports: Microsoft to buy Nokia smartphone division
Massive Copyright Troll Campaign Will Target Aggregators
Google Web Toolkit: GWT, Closure, NaCl, Dart & JS
10 years working in embedded industry, no idea what Pascall's triangle is.

I would ask you to explain, you would smirk inside, I will be rejected.

I am sure google should have enough data by now to see if there is correlation between knowing this problem and performance of hired programmer. I will be suprized if it has any relation.
Some anonymous person claims to have been an intern and you think that's credible?
Don't change the world
Me either..12 years for me.
Read the classics. Learn how to paint/draw/sculpt. Travel to random places. Keep a journal on what you want to do with your future.

After a few years of the above, you should have a much better idea as to what you want. Jumping from one intense startup to another (or into a random job) won't give you time to sit back and reflect.
Congratulations to Penny Arcade, a smile is an important ally when you're healing.
The fact this is only a 50% time increase is why casting the piece as an important optimization is frankly making the piece illegitimate.

If it took 10x or 100x the time, then you have something to talk about. 1.5x? Not Worth Mentioning. Definitely crappy hyperbole that linkbaited a bunch of people to waste their time reading it.

If you're worrying about 1.5x speedups in non-tight loop parts C++ code, I would contend you're probably looking in the wrong place. Even in a tight loop, 33% faster isn't much to write home about.

The thing about all this is: It doesn't make your web app load a "teensy bit faster". The time required to make millions of strings like this is still far far far below that of human detection.

I'd contend, if it made the memory footprint of the program any larger (with larger code pages), accommodating this could Very well slow your startup time down if it made the code page a bit bigger cause a processor cache miss to load another module you had to write to handle using artificially small strings.

This isn't handwaving at the issue of dynamic language runtime speed. That's a strawman of your own construction. This is me pissed off at such a dramafilled title being slapped on an inconsequentially small speed difference in Ruby strings.

I've been similarly pissed off in meetings where people spent 2 hours arguing for an "optimization" that would have saved a total of ~400 ms total if we sold 100 million units and they ran for an average of 20 years each.

This isn't about scaling. This isn't about optimization. This isn't about making dynamic languages faster. This is about saving functionally no time, ever, and usually wasting people's time and making the code slower with premature optimization.
Being from the UK the whole idea of having an atheist organisation seems a little odd. Most people are technically christian but don't go to church and their beleif is fairly skin deep.

Religious apathy is sort of the default and religion doesn't really dictate public policy very much so having an atheist society would be a bit like having a society for heterosexual people.

Are atheists really marginalized enough in the US that it becomes necessary to band together?
We have TouchDB, written in ObjC, still in early development, but it syncs with CouchDB and has a 100ms startup time.

iOS TouchDB: https://github.com/couchbaselabs/TouchDB-iOS

We are also exploring TouchDB on Android.

If you want to join the community and help us build these and other wonders, we do it in this group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mobile-couchbase
'Anonymous' targets German far right with Nazi-leaks.net
Epic Games stands against SOPA
Of the two methods he shows, I want to cast a strong dissenting vote that I prefer method number 1. In method 1, the complexity of the operation -- and it's not that much complexity, let's be honest here! -- is all in one place where I can examine and work with it, but there's not so much that it's a barrier to understanding.

By contrast, in method 2, the complexity is hidden. If there's a bug in method 2, I have way more levels of abstraction to dig through before I've got a clue what's going on. If someone else wrote method 2, I've got probably three or four source files to do archaeology in before I can even be sure what it does.
I think that in most cases Google will interview the employees of the company to be acquired. Either in advance to decide whether the company is worth buying at all, or after the fact to decide who can keep their jobs. The bar might be set slightly differently in these cases than for normal hiring, but certainly not so different that the vast majority of the acquihires would have been "miserable failures" otherwise.

(Also, I've never heard of G+ being in any way a product of a talent acquisition.)
'Anonymous' targets German far right with Nazi-leaks.net ~ Daily World News
Regarding consulting cost and value based model, i would like to mention Martin Fowler article regarding Utility vs Strategic projects (http://martinfowler.com/bliki/UtilityVsStrategicDichotomy.ht...).
In a really clever manner Martin Fowler distinguish projects depending on whether the business function is a differentiator or not. "This is not a separation of IT by the nature of the technology, but into what technology does for the host business".
This point of view should be taken into consideration whenever a consultant/freelancer/contractor have to prepare a quote for a project as the value of the project to the business can influence the cost.
Same here and I have delivers some big stuff, your single test would have filtered me out and I am without a doubt a 10Xer in my field. We assume what we know is common knowledge because we know it. But each of us knows different things and that is what makes us valuable.

I have to ask the parent poster if they truly feel that people need to know this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_triangle to deliver web or mobile solutions? You are highlighting the issue that the article is talking about.

Further, a whiteboard is like giving a mechanic a drawing of a car and a hammer and saying fix the head gasket. If creating a row from a Pascal Triangle was a real issue that crossed my desk the first thing I would do is hit Google to find the mathematical formula and explanation of what it does then I would see if there is a standard library and finally I would write it if one does not exist. Your whiteboard does not have search capabilities on it, so how are you expecting someone to show you how they work when you have provided them with any semblance of an environment that they would work in.
I really don't think this will work because the Government will see it for the empty threat that it truly is.

A Google or a Facebook prove they have the guts to throw their off-switch for anyone to take this seriously.
My first interview out of college was for a position as a Mac developer for a company that made a PC email product (for Novell's LAN message exchanger -- this was in 1990). I'd done several business-focused Mac applications while in college, including a really complex EDI app, and I thought they'd be interested in seeing them as part of the interview. I even brought selected portions of source code.

Nope! Instead they gave me an hourlong verbal interview, which went great, took me to lunch with the team, which went great, then sat me down with a lead developer, who had printed out some of the winning entries from the obfuscated c contest, and asked me to read them and tell him what each program would do when compiled. That did not go so great. I didn't get the job.

That experience remains burned into my brain, and as a manager I won't give puzzles to an interviewee. I'll ask to see code and expect them to speak intelligently about it & the choices they made, but I won't ask them to write code (or, compile code in their head) on the spot.

(Postscript to my story -- that company never shipped a Mac email client. I believe they interview-filtered themselves out of the entire Mac market.)
New Year’s Resolutions for Entrepreneurs
"It has already been widely discussed that an own-brand tablet from Google would likely cannibalize its Android partners’ tablet sales, though there isn’t much to cannibalize at this point."

This statement has no basis and contrary to what happened with Android phones when Google launched the Nexus Line.
Wasn't implying these to be solely a Google issue, but rather something that a material number of firms in the tech industry like to follow in interviewing.

Sorry, but I'm not familiar with the WSJ article you've referenced. Link?
http://betali.st
What are the advantages of Math-U-See? I have been looking for a new math curriculum. I think that the current one we use(Calvert School) is a little too basic.
Culture Isn't Costly
Social Networks Obama And The GOP Hopefuls Should Definitely Join
I agree with CRUD jobs. And I think in reality most programmer jobs are like that. Unless you get to the point where you design something (ex: a system) and then implement it.
A Few Thoughts on the MVP Program
The interview question isn't supposed to test your knowledge of Pascal's Triangle - it's designed to test your ability to create it programatically.

I'm sure cletus or any other interviewer would explain what Pascal's Triangle is to you, and provide a couple rows of example output if you asked.

EDIT: Find/replace "Pascal's Triangle" with "FizzBuzz" and reread the comment. You'll get the same insight without getting hung up on seeing a term you didn't know.
A really good explanation is here: http://www.quora.com/Whats-the-difference-between-fixed-widt...

but the tl;dr is: Different needs for different book types. Think of a reflowable epub as a .TXT file and a fixed-layout epub as an HTML file w/CSS. Yes, a .TXT file is indeed reflowable and adaptable for a screen size.

But what if you're writing an instructional book? Or you've made an awesome photo book of your travels? This is where presentation is more important over reflowable. It's important that the images you are referring to in the text are on the same page. Fixed-layout doesn't have to mean exact pixel representations just as most modern-day web pages adapt to user screen size. You can still "reflow" your text into a fixed-layout epub, the creation tool helps make this easy.

At the end of the day, the screen ratio of tablets is fairly similar, and epubs are just HTML + CSS. A fixed-layout epub gives the author the choice of control - they don't have to specify rigid container widths just as much as they don't have to specify a font.
Sounds awesome! I'm moving to Devon at the end of the month, so London is going to be a 4 hour drive, but I'll do my best organise something and be there
If they lose less money than they would stand to lose should SOPA pass, it's a wise move.
If William Shakespeare wrote an Apple rumor blog
The iOS description is lacking, to say the least.

> When an iOS user hits the home button, an Active app moves to Background.

Not entirely correct, this is only for "multitasking-aware" applications: 1. applications linked against the iPhoneOS3 SDK are not multitasking-aware; 2. applications linked against the iOS4 (or 5) SDK can opt out of multitasking by setting the `UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend` key.

Multitasking-unaware applications are killed when they leave foreground, they do not get in the background and do not get suspended. They get a message `applicationWillTerminate:` and are then killed.

> If the device needs more memory for a game or other large app, Suspended apps will be cleared from RAM.

Incomplete, all non-foreground applications can be terminated and cleared when the device is low on memory. The difference is priority, suspended applications will be killed first (they're just cleared from RAM), then backgrounded (but running) applications will be terminated if the device still needs to reclaim memory.

> Apps are only allowed to remain Background tasks and run code for longer than a few seconds in specific circumstances

That's not quite true, Apple provides specific "infinitely-running" services (location, GPS or cell; VOIP; music playing; as well as a local notification system which allows applications to wake themselves up) but it also provides a service called "Task Completion" which lets applications do whatever they want for up to 10 minutes. Task completion has no "specific circumstances".
Not exactly curriculum, but I really, really, really recommend the (fictional) book "The Last Samurai" by Helen DeWitt.

It's about a young mother homeschooling her prodigy son, and is set in London. Easily one of the most inspiring books I've ever read.

http://www.amazon.com/LAST-SAMURAI-Helen-Witt/dp/B0014JOL1A/...
For what it's worth, I expect people to have that opinion about their (older) code samples. If you get the feeling that people are judging you by the poorer sections of your code sample, speak up! Start telling them what you think is wrong with it. They might not be worth working for if they don't listen to that.
In my case, I may not hire you. Why haven't you worked with another developer in 10 years?
Not sure why I'm downvoted? Am I wrong?
HTC To unveil Tegra 3 Quad-Core Phones at MWC
yeah, sure as hell hope we don't flame out... not planning on it anytime soon ;)

and i think the conditions / methods have improved substantially since 10 years ago. there may be a lot of folks who fail, but there will be successes (already have been with YC, a few others). kudos to PG :)
I knew an engineer who used the 'why are manhole covers round' question in every interview. He was always shocked at how 'quickly' the interviewee figured out the 'answer' of "so it doesn't fall down the hole". These new kids - they're smart. As far as I know, he never figured out that 90% of people have already heard that one.
Spanish here... I hoped our politicians had some personality and told other countries to mind their own business or leave us alone... That goes for US, but also for Germans and French...
There is also a cost to having such a belief. You are adjusting your life to a religion and following its rules when you could have a much better life by not doing so. For me that slight chance of eternal reward is not worth what I would have to suppress on my own personality and "taste" for rationality. Basically, this is Pascal's wager, please read on it.
Why limit interview questions to problems you already know the answer to? You can have them help you with some problem in your actual codebase you're already working on.
Woah, what? Why have I not seen chrome:flags before? This is like Christmas
Worm steals 45,000 Facebook login credentials, infects victims' friends
>I have to disagree with your attitude toward optimisations

How can you, you don't know it?

This is a tiny little fact about string runtime speed in something that is not the tight loop of the program in question running.

Optimizing on this basis is called a premature optimization. You've not pointed a profiler at the code, you don't know a significant portion of the runtime is in this string creation function, so you make larger, more complicated code that getting around this implementation detail of the current ruby interpreter.

Do you know if you made your program faster or slower by doing this change? No, you don't. You have to add this optimization at the end, if and only if you see that this routine is taking a bunch of time. Why?

Adding this extra code can make your program not fit in your processor cache, HUGE SLOWDOWN. Adding this extra code may make extra non-trivial work to work with data that dwarfs the small time saved by thousands (it wouldn't take much to do that). Adding this extra code can make your program require extensive weeks of rewrite and testing, costing thousands more dollars that could instead be spent on better hardware. Adding extra code to work around this could cause optimization in a compiler or library to not kick in, slowing your code.

When optimizing, you should be hand optimizing only the hotspots, not the rest. This article is talking about something that has almost no chance of being the hot spot, and acts like it's essential to never do it. Hence, it is untrustworthy, as the author did not know enough to know how unimportant this fact is to most people, or is dishonest enough to not express that to his audience while knowing it himself.
Obviously not, since so many of your questions can only be answered with BS.

Then we get to his example of a "good" answer for career plans: yet another instance of "In this many years, I see myself that many steps up the corporate ladder. … communication … leadership … responsibility …"