skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Ive solved live coding exercise so fast that people thought i was cheating

I've once been rejected in an interview because I found a solution that the interviewer didn't think would work, spent half an hour trying to prove me wrong rather than trying to expend the smallest effort to understand - even after I proved it was correct. I was quite glad they showed me a bit of the culture though
Interesting on the “y’all”. I’m a Texan and have never addressed a singular person as y’all. If I do address a person as y’all as in “How are y’all doing?”, it’s assumed I’m speaking of the family unit that person belongs to rather than the individual.

While we Texans might find it polite or friendly, in the corporate world I’ve been told to avoid using it in emails.
Yes, there is a component list at the back of the book that lists everything you need. The whole book is about building the simple as possible computer while explaining each part of it. It was a fantastic experience.

Pretty sure that’s the same one that Ben Eater built based off of this book.
See sibling comment for awning comments.

We went all electric in an area where PG&E outages are frequent. We have battery and solar, but during extended outages there usually isn’t any sun. Our solution is to get a propane tank and generator that can charge the battery. This is a complicated compatibility problem, so we should have put the generator in at the same time as the battery and solar.

Heat pumps are fine, but the contractor undersized the ducts. Run a system backpressure test yourself (get the service manual) before writing the final check for the install.

Permitting and insurance in California are maliciously bad.

If you want a graywater system, apply for the permit at the same time you start the project. Also, be prepared to pay $20-30K for “engineering” and permits, but only $1-5K for parts and installation. (Or look around more than we did for an ethical designer.)

Get the best possible insulation and if possible pay for plaster. We’ve had a few leaks, and plaster / rockwool is much more tolerant of water than drywall / fiberglass.

Pay for all the smarthome stuff, but insist on offline home assistant compatibility.

Wire multiple outdoor circuits (120v and 240, if possible) so you can charge a car, run a hot tub, run a pool pump, charge a lawnmower, etc, etc without thinking about circuit capacity. You won’t do those things, but they cost basically nothing now, and $10K or more later.

AFCI breakers are a scam (incompatible with appliances that contain motors or switches), so expect nuisance trips unless you replace them with GFCI post-inspection.

The fancier the lamp, the more compatibility and capacitor whine you will encounter. Our most trouble free lamps were under $100 at ikea. I know which ones cost 10x that, but meh.

Under no circumstances purchase doorknobs made by emtek, assa abloy or kwikset. (Two of those brands are $$$).

Keep a bottle of spray air on hand at all times because modern smoke detectors will go off at 2am and the only way to fix it (other than a hatchet) is by spraying off the sensors.

Whatever your plan is for a roof, get a nicer one.

Pick a general contractor that has put up lots of homes in your county.
This is extremely common in big tech careers.
This is a very contentious statement. I studied CS at two very different EU universities and there was a massive focus on theory plus programming. All courses had huge coding projects where we had to build real end applications, including courses with a very strong theoretical component, which made things really tough.
Mark Shepard is trying to make hazelnut finished pork into a “thing”. I think it was always niche to one tiny demographic but most of us have never heard of it. It’s a lot easier to deal with hazelnut harvesting if the ones you miss turn into ham. So what if you were supposed to harvest yesterday and it’s raining today?
I think you have to say “all y’all” for the plural.
>We have no such guarantees in software.

To be fair, it's our own damn fault. "Poor stewardship over professional standards" is a succinct way of putting it.

The reasoning comes down to poor training, lack of standard competency tests (which is a stable goal to train for), and probably heavy disagreements about what a candidate should be capable of as a junior/mid/senior/principal, or at year 1, 2, 3, 5, etc. of their career.

Communication of these standards over blog posts and what you can find via search engines just won't - and hasn't - cut it for raising the competency of the industry as a whole. If you are competent, you can publish a book which becomes popular, but there would still be disagreement about what books are important.

As an example, Designing Data Intensive Applications is probably one of the more well-known books, but it's not a requirement to read that. The reason it's not a requirement is that you can meander through most jobs by just googling stuff and no one denies you a job if you can't talk about its content.

This problem has gone on long enough that most of us can't give a comprehensive list of what the "basic knowledge" is that we need. Most of us could try to make our own lists, but we'd be much less confident that that list should be the standard because it hasn't received any critical review and approval by a large sample of people.

We need to get out of this free-for-all thunderdome. We do that by getting the companies aligned on what they expect. Then they simply don't hire people that don't meet those expectations. Then we can start writing competency tests towards meeting those expectations and simultaneously develop training material to pass those tests. Most importantly, those standards cannot change too quickly otherwise we end up with the same moving target situation we have now.

You give me the training material, I pass a test, then I get a junior job and continue training for the expectations at various job title levels. It should be that simple.
Having to pay a fine instead doesn't make it better.
Also make sure to bake them yourself instead of using third party cookies.
Koenigsegg TFG (Tiny Friendly Giant)
Blocking XHR requests by default would probably be a good start before 1st party JS. I already default to blocking 3rd party content.
Ah yes - peace in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Serbia, Rwanda... Much peace, such prosperity.

I wouldn't choose China over the US any day of the week, but over the last 3 decades they've objectively been more pacifist and prosperous than most US client states. Please tone down the jingo.
I'm asking my children every time, whether they consent to giving the Santa their list of actions. If they don't consent, they won't be receiving any gifts at all. It's that simple.
I am loving this
Having the ability to do something under restricted circumstances doesn't make it a natural right. If something is truly a natural right, then they should be able to exercise that right under any circumstances, in any situation.
that's why we give santa cookies (and milk)
Also see, the sun also rises because hemmingway transliterated a ton of Spanish, including thees, thous, some colloquialisms
I used to feel the same way, and yes, reliance on credentials and formal training often serves the credentialing and training industries. But, I don't think our industry's current 'free for all' ultimately serves anyone.

We should consider an inexpensive, very basic "programmer's bar exam" to establish a (admittedly very low) proficiency baseline. I'm not asking for a test that gatekeeps software engineering only to people who can write a compiler. I'm asking for a reliable document that says this person can write a loop and a conditional statement and can reason about how it works. Is this a lot to ask for?
> They just haven't developed a product that complies with Chinese law

Strictly speaking then, Meta is banned in China for not complying with Chinese law.
It’s an unfortunate safety tradeoff to guarantee consistency. Better visibility into program behavior could fix it.
It is the most expensive power source. Cost is prohibitive without the state footing part of the bill. And depending on the type of power station, it is not as reliable too: remember past year France shut down few of their nuclear plants due to the draught causing water levels in rivers to drop? They needed that water for circuit cooling.
Modulate one oscillator with another
Yes, the accomplishments of OpenAI represent that in action. It's an exceptional outcome to say the least.

If everybody could do it, they would be doing it. Altman's abilities are every bit as rare as that of a 10x software developer. The same was true of Jobs, and the same is true of Musk (regardless of whether someone likes him or not; who cares if he's likable, it's an infantile emotional derangement to obsess so much over likability).
It would be silly to request material things as proof for immaterial things. Similar to math or ethics, it doesn't make sense to ask for material evidence that the square root of 2 is irrational or that torturing babies is evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitride

> Like carbides, nitrides are often refractory materials owing to their high lattice energy, which reflects the strong bonding of "N3−" to with metal cation(s). Thus, cubic boron nitride, titanium nitride, and silicon nitride are used as cutting materials and hard coatings. Hexagonal boron nitride, which adopts a layered structure, is a useful high-temperature lubricant akin to molybdenum disulfide.

Beyond that, when it comes to cutting tools in particular, there's often interesting solid phase and surface chemistry with layered gradients of oxynitrides forming at depth from the working interface that have similar properties to the base nitride and absorb energy through multiple phase changes and chemical dissociations before ultimate mass reduction, extending the life of the working surface
If negotiating the tu/vous distinction takes major mental effort, are you on the spectrum? Difficulty with understanding social cues and (these distinctions are also about creating distance) other people’s space is a typical trait of autism. These linguistic innovations wouldn't spread – and often quickly, within a couple of generations – if the neurotypical masses found them burdensome.

I'm in a country with this distinction, too, and I don't like strangers addressing me with the informal just like that. Every sociolinguistic setting is different, but using just the informal might not automatically create rapport but the opposite. Saying people like myself aren't worth your time sounds like sour grapes, and it might rob you of some opportunities.
I guess I should have been clearer; I didn't exactly intend eating it alone.

There's more than enough calories to sustain life in a Thai green curry with bamboo in it ;-)
"In the 17th century, thou fell into disuse in the standard language"

Why would that need to be common knowledge 3-400 years later then?
Program Manager II for Windows
If shipping something requires a 'team' – coordination between specialists (or worse, multiple 'owners') – it'll be harder than when each cross-cutting feature can be done by a broadly-capable/empowered 'full stack' person.

(At least, that's how I interpret the OP, and don't understand your perception of any tension between 'full stackers best' & 'teams unproductive'.)
That's a bridge too far for me: I have no ovaries to spin , no desire to spin analogous parts, and no regrets.

I do remember an old story about a hanging wicker basket with a hole in the bottom of the seat and a bed beneath. Surely ovaries would spin, but I digress...
Santa Claus lives off the grid and flies his unregistered aircraft across borders with no use for a passport.

Santa Claus is a free man on the land sovereign citizen
Not everything is about the only thing that’s been on _your_ mind lately. Other stuff exists, and it doesn’t all have to fit a single narrative.
If only software based systems were soft for users, not just appliance makers. https://malleable.systems
I've had one interview with as a PHP/Symfony developer somewhere around 6-7 years ago, where I architected the classes in the app to receive dependencies as argument rather than querying them through the container, and was suggested because it was not best practices, and a couple of years later Symfony itself re-architected dependencies management the way I did in that test, some people shouldn't really be allowed to interview, most recently I've had this tech lead telling me he was architecting an innovative health monitoring system for their app, and was running every 10-15 minutes UNIT tests in the production app, asked why UNIT test would suddenly fail in production found out his UNIT tests were not UNIT, just integration querying actual resources
The Fastest Road Cars and the People Who Drive Them
Industry can definitely adapt to electricity prices. This is the power of free markets, they can optimize production and demand. Fluctuating prices cause by renewables will cause investments in storage and demand-side flexibility.
> just like "free market" needs strong regulations to prevent monopoly and price gouging, freedom of speech should be about levelling the playing field and not as an excuse for bad takes.

No, freedom of speech is actually unique in that there can be no "reasonable" restrictions on it. This is because determining whether a particular restriction is "reasonable" would require free discussion about that restriction, which is impossible as long as the restriction is in place.
This Texan's understanding:

"Y'all" = plural you

"All y'all" = "all of [plural] you" as distinct from "some of you/y'all"

Don't think I've ever heard a singular y'all. "How ya doin'" would be the singular version of "How y'all doin"
Would be cool to have a Lisp backend with a Pascal GUI
> As far as I know, there’s no way to set a dynamic width for an HTML input with pure CSS (please lmk if that’s not the case). Setting max-content doesn’t work, for example, because inputs are replaced elements that have intrinsic dimensions and behaviors that are not fully governed by CSS.

This is the case currently, but when field-sizing: content; lands, you can do it with a single property.

Also I get a weird feeling when something like React makes simple things hard and low performance. The solution of pouring a lot of time into debugging and optimizing (in context of React) feels even weirder to me. Sure, you might not need React here, but what if you do? What's the next best solution? Integrate the React "frame" with an "island" of vanilla?

I don't know, something about having this issue puts me off in a major way.
Why many rules-loving Germans love rogue New Year's fireworks
If I had to guess I'd say HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Taking a moment to think is totally fine. But it's important to be able to explain what you're going to build before you actually build. Writing up clear design docs and architecture is critical in most senior technical positions.

Obviously the expectation here changes on leveling--with juniors if they just code in silence before explaining their solution at the end, I'm less concerned. But if a senior just starts coding on the whiteboard I'll interrupt them and ask them to explain what their approach is, in English, before coding it up.
"Sie Arschloch" is funny in that it highlights that one:

1. has enough manners to not call people you don't know "du" (and you are not letting emotionality override those manners)

2. yet you know that person well enough to judge their behaviour and call them out as an asshole

It is a bit like punching someone with velvet gloves.
I think you're right about the implicit group/family aspect in many cases. If I'm taking to one friend and say "how are y'all doing" then that friend's family or ingroup is certainly implied in the question.

The singular polite "y'all" I'm referring to is generally used when the other party is not known. F.ex. I regularly, though certainly not always, hear clerks, waiters, or other service industry workers using "y'all" singularly when asking "what can I get y'all to eat" or "y'all need anything else" when speaking to exactly one person, and I use it that way myself.
People acting like there is a language for a problem are honestly delusional. Most problems can be solved in most languages, which is why they are called general purpose languages, so you have to make a choice somehow.
What is Festivus? (And how to celebrate with the rest of us)
Its origin story dates back to George’s youth when Frank went to the store to buy a doll for his son. Another father was reaching for the same toy — the last on the shelf — leading Frank to “rain blows upon him … I realized there must be another way.”

Do you have your aluminum pole? What about your grievances? Do you have them written down so you can air them at the proper time? Have you been in training for the feats of strength? Do you have the meatloaf prepared?
Some are better, many are not. There are not many other systems of the same scale as London's in the continent, and those that are aren't really much better. The Paris Metro for example is very dirty and smelly in my experience, although the trains are frequent which is nice. Generally, across the world, I find larger cities have dirtier public transport, with the exception of Tokyo which is spotless. There are lots of cute and beautiful tiny systems across Europe, like Prague, but it's obviously easier to make a small system that works well than something at the scale of London, Paris or NYC.

Where London really struggles, as the whole of the UK does, is the awful ticketing system. That said if you don't care too much about the cost and stick to the Oyster zone, you can just tap your phone and not think about it beyond that. Oh, also the lack of AC for the few weeks of hot temperatures we get, but that at least is apparently being fixed soon.

Functionality wise, I've never had any issues in London. The open data is accurate and comprehensive, so the app of your choice has accurate route planning, you pay by tapping your phone and follow the instructions. Other systems have mostly caught up now, but for a long time London did better than 90% of other systems in that area.

I'd say the city I found most surprisingly good was Stockholm. Very comprehensive for the relatively small population size, and all the stations were beautiful and clean. If anything, it seemed overbuilt and almost desolate a lot of the time. I'm not sure how they afford or justify the upkeep on it given that most other systems in the world seem to be struggling.

> Some public transport absolutely is 24/7.

It may well be, but Zurich's isn't, which is what I was talking about! Very few places have 24/7 trains, but Zurich doesn't even have 24 hour busses except at the weekend.
> it is reserved for the closest of relationships such as family, lovers etc.

You use du for your friends, your classmates, people your own age up through about college, and anyone you think you are or should be on informal terms with. Such as shop workers (sometimes), bartenders (usually), waiters (depending on location), random people in the street (in places like Berlin, if they're not senior citizens), and anyone -- regardless of age or station -- who has said du to you first, unless you want to very specifically snub them. You use du with people you play Fußball against even if you've never met them before and they're ten years older than you. Same with drinking. It would, perhaps counterintuitively, be rude to use Sie in many social situations involving complete strangers. Unless they're old.

Then there is the ritual, rarely followed anymore, of actually formally suggesting that you and someone else -- usually a work colleague -- use du with each other... and refusing that request is giving a very cold shoulder, there normally would not be another offer in one lifetime. (An "inferior" should not suggest it to his/her "superior," that would also be inappropriate.)

Du does enough work in German as she is spoke, I don't think it makes sense for foreigners to learn the Sie form before having proper facility with all the du grammar. Given the immigration trends of the last 20 years, people will just be happy to hear German in the first place. Then learn to properly siezen when you're already conversational. My zwo Pfennig anyway.
Alabama has a long growing season, a ton of arable land and more average rainfall than nearly anywhere in California. Not as warm in winter as California sure, but I’m not sure it’s the best example
Oh, and either find someone that has installed like 100 hybrid hot water heaters, or check the installation for wires that rub (heat pumps usually don’t vibrate) and air exhaust / inlet condensation post-install.
HN is built on Arc, a dialect of Lisp and runs on a single box. More details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28478379
I interviewed recently at a large GPU-related company, and the interviewer setup a bunch of softball questions.

What's your favorite editor, what language do you like using for scripting, what's your favorite Linux distribution, do you have a homelab...

We were having a decent back and forth and getting along, and then he hit me with the final question, "we really aren't supposed to ask, but what do you like to do in your spare time?"

I mentioned that I had a 2 and 3 year old and joked that I didn't have much free time anymore, and said I liked working in the garage with my hands to get a break from computers.

I didn't realize I gave the wrong answer until an hour or two later (based upon the rest of our conversion and his questions). It would have been the right time to show a few personal projects on GitHub.
If someone in an interview basically says they just want to be left alone to program (or whatever), that's at least starting to send a red flag up the flagpole. I'm sure there are some of those at many large companies but the most influential developers I've know were pretty good at working with people and casually interacting.
> Maybe it's because I'm in California and they're simply heavily skewed towards a certain style..

And I'm trying to tell you that it's because you're a late-30s man dating twenty-something year old girls you can "impress" with a car.

You're self-selecting for the type of personality you're "not complaining" about.
Yes - and this is how it is in a lot of other Indo-European languages too.
I'd wanted a bell in the Rust Egui/Winit system. There's no simple cross-platform "beep" or bell feature, short of bringing up a whole audio system.

The original Teletype bell in a Model 15 Teletype is a 3-inch gong with a satisfying "bong" sound. That was intended to be heard across a room of noisy machines. There's also a little end of line bell for typists, but that's not loud.
again, there is no problem this is solving
I've wanted to play games since Atari Pong came out. But I've never owned a console, and haven't owned a computer with a discrete GPU since 2005. Twenty years ago, I satisfied my urge to game by playing Unreal Tournament, Quake, etc. demos. More recently, I'd spend an hour a week watching other people play games on YouTube, to see if I was missing anything.

This year, the snake has entered my garden in the form of an RTX 3060 that I bought for AI and media production applications.

My wife has bought me a flight stick for Christmas, so I can play DCS myself, instead of watching other people's videos.

I worked so hard avoiding escapist leisure in favor of physical exercise and 'maker' hobbies that it's difficult to switch off the discipline, and go have some escapist fun.

I'm retired and have all the resources needed to indulge in pure fun. I'm gonna take advantage of the opportunity.
Can flow batteries finally beat lithium?