skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I didn't know what it was either, but I googled it and found a simple explanation on Wikipedia. I'm sure the interviewer would at least give you that basic background information ("Pascal's triangle is a structure in which each number in the triangle is the sum of the two directly above it.")

I don't think the point is that you would be expected to know every historical abstract concept, but rather that given the basics of one, you could write code to implement a data structure around it.
Others mentioned it, "Staying alive" is indeed not regulated for services nor for activities on Android. It is however strongly recommended to make Services terminate themselves when they are done and instead use the AlarmManager service for handling periodic background tasks. The idea is that the AlarmManager syndicates all periodic tasks and performs then in batches to minimize battery consumption and maximize sleep mode.

Emphasis on "recommended"...

Anyway there are a lot of technical things to say about the Android Multitasking System. Of course, there is the whole application lifecycle thing that the article mentions, and the Service object that others mentioned, but then again your intuition is spot on: it's roughly the same mechanism on iOS and Android. The key difference for Android is that it's the exact same mechanism that is used to navigate between screens of an app and to navigate from one app to the other, and this mechanism is the Intent system. Its main problem is that it's apparently hard to vulgarize it for marketing people.

Let's look at it that way: I tell the phone "show my inbox", the phone looks up a list of apps that declared that they can "show" an "inbox", and checks if they have access to "my" inbox. Once it resolved a list of eligible applications, it executes it using the Intent as unique call parameter. If the executable is a Service, it starts code in the background. If the executable is an Activity, it brings its Screen to the front and updates its content using the Intent's parameters. In our case, it shows the inbox of the user. If the Activity was still in memory, it doesn't create a new one but rather reuses the same and just updates the content.
This is essentially the system that allows the "Back" button to work seamlessly, since the history is nothing but a stack of Intent objects, each with enough information to recreate the whole screen from scratch, or just update the content back to what it was before.

The AlarmManager system I mentioned above works the same way: when you register an alarm, you put an Intent in front of a Date. When the Date comes, the Intent is fired, the OS resolves the corresponding Application, Activity or Service and starts it.

In the end, Multitasking in iOs is exactly the same as multitasking in Android, but with an added regulation on what can stay really alive and for how long - the main difference is that the whole Android OS is designed on top of a system that allows launch arguments and contexts to be stored and passed around seamlessly at high speed. The result is why the article author said "multitasks like a boss".

For the end user, the only visible difference is that Android has a Back button. Oh, and that his battery life is in the hands of app developers rather than Apple.
You need to take a long break. At least six months. I did this after my yahoo term was up and I needed it.
Amazing to me how a company can gross $1.1B and end up at a loss at the end of that. Almost feels pointless.
When I give a live programming problem, I cut interviewees a lot of slack for not doing well under pressure, as long as they seem suitably embarrassed about it. There's a big difference to me between "I know this step has got to be really simple, but I'm having a brain cramp", and "This step is really hard, no wonder I can't get it" (when it isn't).
I understand the negative response to calling this a "Nuclear Option", but I don't understand everyone's negative reaction to the idea. How many 12 - 17 year old kids have any idea what SOPA is? If for the next two weeks all they saw was a "simulated SOPA" on facebook and google, how many do you think would complain to mom and dad? I'm sure plenty of kids of wealthy people have gotten things changed just in the name of shutting them up.

Why hasn't anyone suggested boycotting the media industries? Perhaps I missed it, but are we that materialistic to where no one even considered it? Stop going to theaters, buying from iTunes, cancel netflix. You vote with your dollars.
Fountains and Planters of Alfresco Decor
Algorithmic Composition: Markov Chains in Pure Data
When people outside the US ask why they should care about US laws like SOPA, this is the answer. Laws spread quickly from country to country via trade agreements, copyright treaties, and other forms of influence.
No kidding. Makes me wonder what technologies heavily used today won't be around for my 16 month old son's 10th, 11th, 12th birthdays.
Then you need to give said competent programmer a computer, a compiler, a debugger and the ability to search for information. You are asking a programmer to show you that they are competent in their daily work, but not giving them any of their tool that they work with to do so. Again it's like asking a frame carpenter to draw a truss and expecting that to somehow represent their daily activity of putting a truss together. If you want to test somebody do it how https://webmynd.com/ does it and make it a pre requisite of getting to the interview that way developers can do it on their terms using their tools of the trade and opt out before they are stuck in a room in a bad situation.

I still contend that you are not gaining much insight and are producing an unnecessary filter that can do you more damage than good. I was on a project once that was cursed, we had a developer have a stroke, I had to have my heart restarted due to SVT from sleep deprivation etc. etc. We literally lost everyone that knew the technology except for me and I was not in good shape, and there was this one guy Tom Marra, he was an artist, but the kid had passion he had never coded in his life, but we where in a really bad situation, once he found out that with source control he could hack the crap out of the code and then just re-pull to fix his mistakes, he set out to teach himself JavaScript, on his own initiative. In less than a month he was contributing code to source control and in 2 months you could not tell his code from a seasoned pro's. The one quality this kid had was passion. You can't identify Tom Marra's by making them solve trivia on a whiteboard.
I used to work for a highly sales-focused software company (6-7 figure licenses, year-long sales cycles) with some very good salesmen. It was an eye-opening experience. The really good salesmen were no more ethical than a used-car salesman, but they were very good at portraying themselves the way you describe and extremely judicious in their use of deception. Perception of honesty and integrity is very important in sales, but I have my doubts that genuinely honest people rise to the top in sales. I had the typical distrust of shady salespeople before working there, but now I'm deeply suspicious of anyone in sales, regardless of how honest they seem.
What is a FizzBuz and what does it have to do with day to day Software Engineering?
As a vigilant atheist, I have now immediately decided that I don't believe in pirates. I mean, have you actually ever seen a pirate?
I interviewed at ITA in 2007, and ITA did the puzzle process better than all but a few other companies I've interviewed at, for the reasons you mention. But don't discount the in-person whiteboard puzzle. I was told I had the second highest score on the puzzle solution I sent in, but I flopped the whiteboard puzzle part of the interview, and ended up not being hired. I think this was a good thing - I didn't have the algorithm skills and knowledge of the other people in the QPX group (QPX is ITA's main business, their search engine - they actually recommended in advance that I interview for their reservation system group based on my resume, but I decided to go for the more brainy one). If I didn't have the whiteboard interview, I would have gotten in and probably regretted it later (much later, I realized that I would have regretted working at ITA anyway, or anywhere in Boston, but that's totally unrelated).

During the same job search, I also noticed Facebook had puzzles. I solved one and got invited to interview but never went. I wouldn't have applied otherwise. I guess this is another lesson - if you put public puzzles out there, expect people to send solutions without necessarily being excited to work at your company.
I actually started something new, managed the product, a whole team, did a fair bit of design, promotion/press, successfully exited, all sorts of stuff that doesn't really fall under "Objective-C developer."

You would be perfect for a startup where that skill and experience mix is often desperately needed. But you are burned out. (Which is OK as long as you don't stay burned out.)

So do you want to teach? Join something like Y combinator but as an advisor. (Can you join without dropping most of your financial gain? Can you drop a big chunk and still have enough left to be comfortable?)

How about go into a wildly different filed, something you have a kernel of interest in but have never worked in, forest management, trapeze artists, C++ developer.
(One of those suggestion was a joke.)

Or travel. (Just enjoy life for a while!)
Yup. It feels like "everyone" I know here in Norway has switched from pirating music to using Spotify, even my parents. In November 2010 1 million Norwegians used Spotify (and it has probably increased a lot since then) and Norway is a country of only 5 million people! Since Spotify is a Swedish service it's probably just as, if not more, popular there.

Pirating movies and software are still quite common though.
#1 and #2 are both very very impressive. And Roy is funny too.
So the civil answer to my question "why not just avoid keeping weird stuff on your phone?"

is: "I keep naked girlfriend pics on my iPhone. I don't think that's weird, but I don't want someone to see them."

I see your point. I apologize for using the word "weird." I assume that's what the downvotes were for.
I agree with kipsfi completely, if the connecting part of the equation was built into the experience we would see a lot of added value.

I would love to see some kind of skills exchange enter the equation so everyone feels like they can contribute. Hackerbuddy.com tries to do this virtually, but I could see the physical world giving this idea plenty more oomph.

Hope that's helpful.
January 6th, 2012 – Packers’ Rodgers Benched for Postseason
"You send me a stupidly long resume

90% of all written correspondence (from customers, users, collaborators, vendors, etc.) is too long. Do you think they're all stupid, too?
"

I agree with most of your post, but after doing a lot of interviews as the hiring manager, I have to agree that resumes should be short. I won't exclude a candidate just for sending a resume that is long, but as a general rule, don't expect me to go past page 2, especially for an entry-to-mid level position.
Very much this, my company has been taking a deeper look at its hiring processes lately, and I know there are explicitly comments on our small coding problems that say things like

"Candidates might get hung up on the gotcha part of it: the actual snip calculation. That's not something we care about, but that the candidates will likely think we care about. We should consider just giving them the formula (or letting them use a pre-defined "snip" method)."
After considerable reflection upon this point, I tend to fall on the side of those that say that a really _simple_ problem, like FizzBuzz, is quite valuable as a negative filter. It saves one valuable time in dealing with people that, as it turns out, can't code at all, literally, but are incredibly good bullshitters. There are those. But that's about as far as I think whiteboard code quiz shows should go.

It took me a long time to appreciate the utility of something like FizzBuzz in terms of how Pareto-optimal it is.

I think it finally clicked when I was getting interviewed for my US citizenship by USCIS in 2008. In the preliminary stages of the application process, the officials had gotten us all psyched up about how there is going to be a US civics test and an "English test". We were given a 100-question booklet of Civics 101 and a lot of anticipatory anxiety.

So, imagine my surprise when the interview came around and with it, the storied, fabled English proficiency test. You know what it was? Listening to one simple sentence read aloud and transcribing it accurately. It wasn't even a hard sentence, it was something on the order of "The man walked his dog across the yard and over the turnpike". Really? Really?! I was flabbergasted. Come on, I could pass this in like 4 languages. One sentence? That's all?

After thinking about it, I realised there was more utility to it than I had appreciated, though. Yeah, I've been speaking English for 18 years, but there were people in the room who literally did not. They could not pass this test. And for someone who really cannot speak, write or understand English much, this test would be genuinely challenging or impossible to pass. At the same time, 90% of people who can pass it probably are sufficiently proficient in English to function in this society. I'm not arguing that it's a particularly insightful, perspicacious or revelatory test, but the point is that it accomplishes more than you think, from a statistical perspective, even though anyone who is even marginally literate would dismiss it as ridiculously easy to the point of absurdity.

So it goes with "a priori" programming tests, I think.
How to make your presentation slides more interesting
NetBeans 7.1 finally is out
The "daily deal" space is rapidly being turned into a commodity service. I'd expect the splits to become even more favorable for merchants. How low can it go? Probably all the way to 10% or less for Groupon.
Visionary: Ron Paul's 2002 Predictions All Came True
Free Online Classes from Stanford
Podcast interview with David Liebke on Clojure Avout
Avoid agile dogma: recommendations not rules
I don't think I've ever worked in an environment where that's been something that happens all the time. Maybe occasionally being with someone while they try to sort out a bug.

But actually creating new code with someone sitting there - that's something that's not something I've seen often
Dan, congrats, you've accomplished quite a bit. I'll echo what others are saying and suggest taking an extended break to recharge. Visit some new places and try some new thing but most importantly, I'd also suggest reinforcing your existing relationships and to try to make some new ones. I've found that doing so increases the amount of ideas and opportunities you'll have. Figure out what your runway and burn rate is so that you're not pressured to just 'find something'. best of luck!
Don't Overlook SMS as a Powerful Marketing, Relationship Channel
The only successful way of finding the right employees that I know of is the "try before you buy" approach. And I extend that to beyond software developers.

As a manager, I have hired people who interviewed extremely well, but later on, just didn't work out. As an employee, I have been rejected multiple times at multiple interviews at a large certain company. But with some luck, I ended up inside that company at some point and worked there for 8 years. I had the highest performance rating each and every year while I was there.

In general, I think its best to have a culture of try before you hire and fire fast if things don't work out.
A Land Where the BlackBerry Still Thrives
The End of the World as Debunked By My College Roommate
Microsoft Turns Good Engineers Into Bad Managers, Says Ex-Employee
SV Angel, Founder Collective put $850K In Customer Retention SaaS Custora
I didn't do any research about the author and just now found out his name is Ed. I mention this because I'm someone whose only experience with this author was that one post and even with that small amount of information I was able to infer that the guy had experience and knew what he was talking about. I also think its very obvious that what Ed suggests is not to be taken at face value. When I read the microPHP Manifesto my reaction was that it made total sense but of course, as always, follow it if and when it makes sense. Taking into account that the post was probably a kind of rant as a reaction to some framework frustrations his manifesto makes perfect sense.

Now the author of this article refuting the Manifesto seems to be under the impression that what Ed suggests should be the way things are done from now on. It's clear as day that all Ed was sayng was that sometimes the MicroPHP Manifesto tenets make more sense. And they do! Sometimes!

Guess what? Everyone is right! Hopefully that doesn't make some people's brain explode but both authors are correct. Mileage varies. The thing I didn't like most about this was how he picked apart the drummer analogy. I felt like it was a low blow and not really necessary.
Hackerspace milled aluminum ice mold
Raph Koster - Rigid programming philosophies are the devil
I was disappointed when Time magazine named "the Protester" person of the year for 2011. A blackout of major web services would amount to little more than a stunt. Sure, the mainstream media will run the story for the first day...but for how long will these services remain willfully unavailable? Who will cave in first and go back online without resolution?

It seems to me that the popularity of activism and protesting do little to affect change, whereas more commonly yes than no they simply represent an inconvenience to everyone else who can't be bothered with another struggle/burden in their lives. There must be more mature and effective means of defeating SOPA than having a group of web services throwing a temper tantrum.
Eh, I'm sure some hefty salaries being paid with the revenues makes employees happy at least.

I'm sure Groupon will get things under control, but I think the cut in fees and less frequent participation of merchants will offset any revenue growth. Just more investing on hype I guess.
Please critique my crypto proposal for decentralized web app logins
Barnes & Noble Considers Spinning Off Its Nook Unit
Math-U-See is a visual and object based math system, it's actually pretty revolutionary they use color coded blocks to represent math problems and the instructor video uses the same blocks, the student then has a set of blocks that they use to re-visualize the problem. They also start teaching Algebraic concepts early on. We are really happy with it for the K-8th education, as we start to enter high school level math we have been relying on Kahn's more and more. If you want more detail of why we did not choose other programs I can get that info from my wife. She narrowed them down and then I helped choose out of her narrowed selection. I don't know what her filters where for getting down to the smaller selection, I just know that Math-U-See stood out from the 3 we narrowed down to.
Genuine interest: why? I felt the same, until I realized that I also want continuous integration, preferably as continuous as possible. This means that if my coworker works on a feature that somehow affects what I'm working on, I want to find out now, not in a week after he merges his feature branch.

If there's a single central repository anyway (continuous integration, remember), plus you want people to share with master/trunk/whatever after being under water for at most 2 days, the workflow when using git/hg becomes awfully much like the workflow that SVN enforces on you. When I realized that, I stopped investing time in converting my colleagues to git. I use git-svn myself so that I can stash, move files without `svn move`, do local commits, etc, and everybody is happy.

But I may be missing a great argument.
Shutterfly Saw A Speedup Of 500% With Flashcache
Love your app! Purchased it a long time ago ... thought it was well polished and easy to use. Not surprising that you got bought out!

I agree with the others that say take an extended time off. Travel, read, pursue some new hobbies, do some things you have always wanted to do, etc, etc. Let your brain relax and enjoy life ... without a doubt that time spent will lead to something great down the road. Something much better than if you dive into something new right now.

Congrats again!
Debating the 'Flipped Classroom' at Stanford
> AWS is a way better solution. Especially if combined with CloudFront, since some people are targeting outside of the US :)

To expand on this, you can easily host your Jekyll blog (or any static site) on Amazon S3 and use CloudFront to serve assets. I would imagine this will be more reliable than Heroku and is certainly less complicated than the OP's setup. Unless you have an enormous amount of traffic or huge assets, S3+CloudFront will be essentially free (dollars per month, if that).
Bad Ass Movie (2011)
Sounds like they're interested in improving GPU development tools, and how to utilize them for tasks they're good for versus what a traditional CPU is good for. From http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/12/vt-supercompute...

"The Virginia Tech team is figuring out how to best to farm out computing jobs so that the GPUs and CPUs do what they do best, without ever going idle, and without spending too much time communicating with one another.

It’s not easy, but they’re using HokieSpeed to build tools for designing and compiling software so that it can be tweaked to run fast on these systems. They’ve also built what they call an “automated runtime system,” which works with the supercomputer’s operating system to speed things up even further."

I think the 'supercomputing for the masses' part comes from the fact that the peak performance of a relatively low-cost GPU is large compared to a CPU, but actually taking advantage of that performance is still difficult. They're aiming to change that with improved software development tools. At least, that's what I gathered from the article.

Here's a link to research they're doing on GPU computing: http://synergy.cs.vt.edu/
Wait, What? Anyone know what this might mean?

FTA: "In some ways these guys are looking outdated. File-sharing as a means to pirate content is becoming yesterday's technology,"
Burt Rutan on Climate Change: An engineer looks at the evidence
Sublet your apartment, go to South America (Beunos Aires) while its warm. Drink coffee, eat steak and figure out your next move. More ideas will come.
Ask HN: What url do you go to when signing in at Starbucks?
You know what I'm talking about :)

I google.com it

- Pete (Co-founder http://tripl.com)
Bing Gordon, Partner at Kleiner Perkins talk about Startup CEOs.
Wordpress is a pain, relative to a platform like Tumblr or a static blog like Jekyll.

I wrote a long post about this recently: http://www.maxmasnick.com/guides/bulletproof_your_blog
I should mention that in reality things are, of course, more subtle, and this two-category quantization is not realistic. In the real situation you'll not only want to identify the BS-status of the interviewer, but give them just the right amount of BS. Don't be too honest, you have to sell yourself after all. Frankly, it's tricky, especially for people who aren't used to talking about themselves.
I have worked with many, many developers. I just don't sit down next to them watching them program, or them watching me.

I have pair programmed (over 10 years ago) and I never saw any benefit from it. I work in an environment where every line of code checked into the repository is reviewed and documented in agonizing detail (welcome to the wonderful world of Medical Device software!) and I completely fail to see the benefit of pair programming.
Get up and running quickly with this CSS stylesheet.
Comic Book writer does it right: No DRM, multiple formats