skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think FizzBuzz is intended to be an actual interview question so much as a thought experiment.
I think we agree. You remember Sony for things which have no software component. The only software Sony was very good at was embedded software. I still have an original AIBO which sort of exemplifies that.

I just realized that from my window here in Tokyo I can see and recognize the tops of 2 large buildings: NTT (Japanese hardware) and Oracle Japan (foreign software). This is why I was so encouraged by the large acquisition of a foreign software company by Recruit this past week.
If I were presented with such a display while holding an interview, I would say, sayonara. I would really hate to work with someone that had such a ridiculously high bar that they would consider that invalidating the entire interview.

But I have this odd suspicion that, in real life, you wouldn't actually walk out.
Read part 2 and 3 of the post first. Notch wasn't the one who was confused.
The whole flow was amazing.
1. Acquire external talent
2. Fire google
3. Tell the press that the new map gonna be amazing
4. Apologize for the whole mess
5. Sell 3rd party map on the app store
6. Profit
It would have been a better series.

http://www.webcs.com/b5/neverwas.html
Apple Drops the "Most Powerful Mapping Service Ever" Claim
Relative term, and totally subjective. I have an rMBP, and use Firefox (as well as InDesign) all the time, and it's not horrible. If your entire screen looked that way, you wouldn't even notice.
I don't believe these results are an accurate representation of the Google Maps geocoder or map data. And it's absolutely not the case that an incorrect result is considered better than no result.

I spot-checked on the Google API a few entries that the spreadsheet showed in the wrong country (Waldemar, Coldstream, Osceola, Snow Road Station, Belgrave, Winger, Heidelberg, Priceville, Vernon, Blackwater). I only got one result that was wrong (Vernon) with the default settings. With a country bias to Canada, which I hope would have been there for an API user from that country, that one is resolved to a sensible looking locality as well.

There clearly are some queries in that set for which Google returns the wrong answer, but I'd be the frequency of those problems is an order of magnitude lower than this post suggests. It'd be interesting to know what the reason for this discrepancy is, but without seeing the exact queries on the wire one can only speculate.
I'm surprised that the Pirate Party wasn't mentioned here. There are a bunch of free software tools with an aim towards participatory democracy, here are a couple very interesting ones:

- Liquid feedback, http://liquidfeedback.org and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_Feedback

- Votorola, http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht

Lots more at http://metagovernment.org/wiki/Active_projects
Hey, sweet! Thanks.

A couple issues:

1) The number keys don't work when in full screen mode.

2) Also the keys don't work at all if the mouse pointer is outside the video rectangle. (Is that a limitation of the web browser interface?)

It'd be great to have a few more keyboard shortcuts too. Left/right arrow keys to skip backward/forward 10 seconds? Keys for double speed, half speed, and frame-by-frame playback mode? Hit '?' to see a list of keyboard shortcuts?
Who cares the about what FizzBuzz REALLY is? Can't we all just agree that it's a programming test because anybody who calls them self a programmer should possess these painfully simple analytic skills. If you can translate pseudocode to code, but can't write pseudocode for FizzBuzz, you're a translator not a programmer.
Not looking forward to the ads. I'd rather pay for it.
I'm sure the children in their class will be happy that spoiled children of ego-inflated financial wealth mongers are gone. Their taxes will also be appreciated.
Not to pick a fight, but is there something specific about this product that you feel crosses the line? To me your complaint has a similar ring to Plato's on writing (http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/wordscape/museum/plato.html). My point is that technologies such as this app have a long lineage, have faced similar complaints, and eventually the complaints disappear as we incorporate the technologies and move on. You might be right that a certain magic is lost, but overall the trend is strongly towards cognitive efficiency at the expense of magic. Or am I missing your point?
Open-source or not, I think the answer is yes. I've been working on PlainSite along these lines.

http://www.plainsite.org

http://www.change.org is a great site that's had some real successes, albeit outside of the political arena.

http://www.govtrack.us is also quite comprehensive.
Yea, that's it. It's OUR fault (the technology users) that Microsoft is failing with SkyDrive. If only we abandoned all the other services that do us well and switch to something we don't a)know about and b)don't give a shit about then everything for MS will be fine.

Who are these people writing this crap?
If you have to do interview prep to solve FizzBuzz, then you have no business calling yourself a programmer.
Pure marketing bullshit from microsoft propaganda dept. Notch knows exactly what he is talking about, and these kind of "articles" are the butthurt response. They want 30 % and their code running in all binaries. Thats all, they want more power over the industry.
Mine asked me if it was okay, and I know exactly where to turn it off. It also saw I visit friends at a regular schedule every week, asked if it could remember it, and gives me traffic time estimates to there around the time I need to go, and earlier if traffic is heavy.
Is this the STUPIDEST posting on HN ever? It's much more likely that the answer to my question is YES than the posting.

Anti-Apple postings are reflexively upvoted by dopes.
Cool idea (I've done 100% on a few Zeldas, Metroids etc... I know this will appeal.)

I have to say the prose copy is a bit clunky though.
Ask some smart business analysts with no coding experience to solve FizzBuzz in Excel. All should be able to do it.

Instead of asserting this fact, put the hypothesis to the test. Ask some smart business analysts and see how many of them can solve fizz-buzz. You're much more likely to win over the audience if you have some data.

Really though, I think this post is needlessly controversial. The whole text could have been, "It makes sense to hire people with no programming experience who can solve fizz-buzz." I don't know how many people fall into that category. I'm not sure how good they'd be or how long they'd take to get up to speed, but that's fine. It's something I can think about and engage with.

The rest of the post is just arguing over definitions. If by "coding" you only mean "turning pseudocode into code", then yes a lot of things people call coding aren't coding. Likewise if by "think analytically" you mean "is able to solve fizz-buzz," then of course companies want programmers who can "think analytically."

No matter what definitions you use, the hiring practices are the same. Fizz-buzz still acts as a negative filter. People who can't solve it aren't hired. People who can solve it may or may not be hired depending on how other things go.
I agree that the numbers thrown around are often a lot of hand waving. However, let me make a few points few points.

1. Check out the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. They calculate the cost to create a new drug and their methodology is very transparent.

http://csdd.tufts.edu/research/research_milestones

2. You can do a simple sniff test on these numbers. Simply call up a CRO that runs clinical trials and ask "What will it cost me to run a Phase III clinical trial?" I did this recently for a project I was working on. They will freely give the numbers about since they are all in competition with each other.

This is what a recent survey of CROs found[1]:
"As for the average per-patient trial costs across all therapeutic areas, in Phase I, costs rose from $15,023 in 2008 to $21,883 in 2011. In Phase II, the cost rose from $21,009 to $36,070. In Phase IIIa, the cost increased from $25,280 to $47,523 and in Phase IIIb, cost jumped from $25,707 to $47,095. Finally, Phase IV expenses rose from $13,011 to $17.042."

Let's do some simple calculations. 1000 patients, 1 year trial. You need to complete two Phase III trials to keep the FDA happy.

1000 patients * $47,000 * 2 = $94M

And that's only for phase III trials. Add in the cost of discovery, pre-clinical work, formulation, Phase I, Phase II, all the paperwork with the FDA.

OK, great, now you're approved, you still need to actually make the drug which includes scale-up, testing, FDA certification of the manufacturing process, packing and distribution.

When I was working at a big pharma company, I heard about a new manufacturing site they had built in anticipation of a really big drug being approved. The cost? Several hundred million dollars. What happen when the drug got rejected by the FDA? The manufacturing site was written off (couldn't really be used to make anything else).

That's why your drugs cost so much.

[1]http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/07/clinical-trial-costs-for-ea...
fellow goan here, and i have to say that while you are mostly correct, things are beginning to shift. there are a sprinkling of homegrown "product" companies popping up in bangalore and pune, and a small but increasing participation in various open source communities. hopefully by the next decade indian software engineers will be motivated by seeing what they can build, rather than by where they can make a quick buck solving someone's outsourced problems.
I'm surprised you're pro-client certs given the privacy implications.
I bought the app and like it. Perhaps I have not discovered it yet but I would like to enter the places that I have been in the past. This would be for my own enjoyment and could be a different mode from the "game mode" which is based on actual GPS data.
You can do it, I'm just trying to ask questions that will make you think. Those answers are going to be your advantage and possibly your marketing.
Would love to hear more details on this.
Heroku needs to improve presenting addons
Congratulations! But I should note that it is very very difficult to quit refined sugar completely. Many things that are not sweet at all can have sugar or hfcs added to them. This includes most bread, pizza, ketchup, all kinds of sauces and marinades, most salad dressings, etc.

Tragically, when cheap hfcs appeared, the food industry decided to start putting the stuff everywhere. Now it is very hard to avoid it even if you do not eat anything sweet.
This is embarrassing. Yes, that's that I did. Thanks :)
Exactly. Less replenishment means more flexibility.

Lots of people killed by IEDs on long supply lines in Afghanistan is an extreme example of the human and military costs. Some of those died to fuel A/C for uninsulated tents... madness.
Uff.. I like Heroku but its sad that I can't filter down addons by category. :-/
How useful is translating "pseudocode into a working program"? I doubt the utility of that skill as a programmer
Exactly. Who cares what it is, it remains useful for weeding out the people who think they can get away with lying about being a programmer.
It is a coding test, and here are the answers:

http://www.geekschool.org/programming/fizzbuzz/

FizzBuzz in lots of languages, including LOLCode.
Recently, my parents went on a trip to London. Before they returned, I received a Google Now card with their flight information and estimated time of arrival. I am not sure if they gathered this info from email or sms. It was somewhat creepy, but certainly helpful and convenient (I needed to call them before they left).

I have been quite pleased with Google Now and use it much more than I ever used any of the other Siri clones. When I am busy, I forget things easily and it is nice when Google just gives me helpful information to keep me on track.
I think some part of this issue has to be that computer science does not fully equate to coding, and the balance of coding to theory curriculum varies significantly. If you're hiring recent grads then it might make sense to give a little leeway, to help them along and see if you see some spark of analytic ability. Maybe interview nerves are an issue.

If your candidate can't do fizzbuzz but is claiming to be an experienced programmer in the required language, the situation should raise a red flag.
I have no special knowledge about this, but from watching MS since their early days I don't believe their goals are quite as crass and simple as you describe. My guess is their internal narrative is more along the lines of:

"A large share of market is shifting away from PCs to smartphones and tablets. Big factors in the success of these devices have been the simplified UI and the centralized app review processs to enforce a baseline level of quality and help prevent malware. Apple and Google have major businesses built on their respective app stores. With a billion or so Windows users there are good reasons to think that our app store could make the others look small in comparison. 30% is similar to what the other app stores are taking and it will be a lot easier to reduce this number later than to raise it."
Code Janitor: nobody's dream, everyone's job
Yes, it mines google latitude data for that. Since I left my office job and started running my own business from home. Latitude has been getting very confused about where I work. Last time I checked it thought I worked at the local shopping centre.

Edit: Just checked, it now thinks I work at my kid's school.
Aren't most artificial sweeteners only 40-50 years old? Asbestos has been used for 4500 years but only in the past 100 have we realized its dangerous.
The debate about iOS maps is driving me absolutely crazy, because any fool can see that this is not about the data (in the US, at least).

This is about quality of search results.

Apple has had search in its products for a long time. It has search in its documentation, in Spotlight, in Mail.app.

All of this search technology is crap. Spotlight is fast, but it's fast crap.

I was in the bay area this week, and searched for San Francisco International. The data is not lacking for this search result. The roads are there in the Maps app database.

Anyone want to guess the result of my search?

Apple partisans want to believe that this is a data problem. If it were a data problem, then it'd only be a matter of time before Maps.app were a solved problem.

Unfortunately, it's not. It's a search problem. I know absolutely nothing about the technical details about how to implement a decent search, but I do know this: Apple has never, not once, delivered a product that gave decent search results.

So good luck, Apple. Hopefully this problem can be solved by throwing money at it. Something tells me that it can't, though.
Put another way, holy crap that was nearly impossible to read.
Any chance you're willing to share this code?
Asking me to imagine a system as a whole doesn't prove your argument.

Instead of the energy system, consider the cost of military supply lines. There's more than the financial cost of delivery; long supply lines are vulnerable to attack and disruption. You don't need to imagine an example: consider IEDs in Afghanistan. Many of those were trucks delivering food and fuel to bases. Efficiency (i.e. insulating tents so less fuel is needed for A/C) results in less deliveries and less deaths.

The same principle applies at sea. Oil ships are a vulnerability and another thing to plan, as well as a major cost that can be more important than the energy efficiency issues.
Sorry - I shouldn't have dumped on the liberal arts - maybe I should have used "left brain."

Algorithms are indeed solving a lot of these problems for Google. They are reading the street signs and shop signs for peet's sake!
Pentagon denies Assange and Wikileaks are enemies of the state
The Ying-Yang of CEOs and Engineers
>"Ask some smart business analysts with no coding experience to solve FizzBuzz in Excel. All should be able to do it."

Bahaha. I want to see you try. And weep.
> On Android, your app has to be running in the background always, to constantly check for such changes itself, which significantly drains the battery. If several such apps are running...

Strictly false. Your app may still have a daemon in the "running" state in the background, but Android supports the exact same "sleep until significant changes are detected by the OS" method that iOS uses. I have multiple applications that can take action of some form or another based on changes to my location, and unless I have my phone screen turned on and actively running the UI for those apps, they never even appear in the list of applications using the most battery.
First thing we need to do is take the current process and make it much easier for the common man to track. That means laws written in plaintext formats that can be tracked. Not released as PDFs, it means keeping track of voting records etc etc. Email notifications to people when a law as passed. Let people follow their politicians in a Facebook style manner so that they can see everything they are doing and leave comments etc.

There are many sites that do some of these things already but none (as far as I know) that combine that all into one nice user interface.

When that infrastructure is there THEN we can start with the more political changes.
> Because Cushman pointed out that a compass tends to have two points, he has received several downvotes.

well, that's because his comment, though superficially relevant, was actually pure noise. there was no compass involved to have two points; the term was being used metaphorically, and everyone (cushman included) knew what it meant.
Does the new version have it anywhere?
Thats why I made the 'get off my lawn' comment, because I know I was coming off as a bit of a crank :)

In response to evan_'s comment, I give an explanation that describes in a bit more detail why I feel gamification is bad in general. So the first paragraph I wrote was a 'the magic is lost' rant, and the second is an angry rant at gamification. I think it is bad and you can see in my other comment for a partial reason why.

I have nothing against this particular product other than the progress bars. If the magic is lost, its lost. But the addictive mechanics that are springing up in more and more web/mobile applications are a disturbing trend. We, the business class, have found out how to make slot machines cool and we're all slapping each other on the back as we make money hand over fist while turning countless customers into addicts.

(I dont believe this product will turn anyone into an addict and I may be making comments that seem extreme when taken out of context. This may be a deeper issue than can be discussed on a internet forum)
Or they want 30% and and to have their code inside all binaries. It's not complicated, it's simple greed and love of power.
Higher order thinking is pretty much required to make any working program of minimal complexity. aka. be a programmer.

If you have to hand a programmer pseudo code in order to write a program, you'd be better off hiring competent programmers to write you a compiler and then you can get rid of the programmers who can't think and code it yourself in your fancy new higher order language.
I've got a question on the maps fiasco, is it possible that Google never shared any usage data with Apple and somehow Apple thought nobody really used the App all that much? Seems like the click/search stream in maps is a tremendous asset for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it comes with a unique undisguisable identifier with each request. Where you go an when you go there, both part of the query when you use maps. Its an advertiser's wet dream I would think.

Perhaps Scott realized that and decided to take it back from Google? I don't know. I do know it is pointless to try to second guess the executive staff of a company like Apple (or Google, or Groupon, or Zynga, Etc) even though it is fun.
How is this different to existing conferences (both hardware and software) where there are a ton of booths and table and people showcasing what they do? Products, services, startups and non-startups alike... Maybe I'm not understanding the difference. Not saying that not differing would affect attendance in any way but I have a hard time answering if I'm not sure I see the personal value proposition. Especially if its just to see what other startups are up to, quite a number of conferences like that around here (probably different for other locations).
It's very difficult to quit it completely, but quite easy to find food that doesn't derive the majority of its calories from sugar.

I consciously quit sugar about 6 months ago, and lost a ton of weight, and feel much better for it. However, I recently had to travel to the US for work, and avoiding sugar there was near on impossible. You guys have the chips stacked against you...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A1B_reactor indicates that there's 300 MW per reactor on the Ford class, and two reactors, so maybe 600 MW total, although I'm not sure if that's the output of the steam powered electrical generators, or if it's the theoretical amount of energy in the steam coming out of the reactor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_per_gallon_gasoline_equiv... says the EPA figures 33.7 kwH is the same as a gallon of gasoline, and there's enough slop in estimating how much power a carrier will have left over for making jet fuel that the error in pretending that jet fuel is the same amount of energy per gallon as gasoline is probably noise.

Other commenters are saying that synthetic fuel is going to take 2-4 times as much energy as the synthetic fuel stores, so let's assume roughly 100 kwH to make a gallon of jet fuel.

That suggests that 600 MW total power might be able to make as much as 6000 gallons per hour if people are happy to leave the carrier drifting with no lights and all its defensive equipment turned off. If the carrier is carrying 75+ planes, that suggests it can make less than 100 gallons an hour per plane. The Google Search summary of http://www.google.com/url?q=http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_i... says a Gulfstream III consumes 568 gallons per hour. A supersonic fighter jet probably consumes somewhat more, and that leaves me wondering if a Ford class reactor is going to be able to produce enough jet fuel for an active fleet of fighter jets. Certainly, the planes don't fly 24 hours a day, but this estimate suggests that the carrier's reactors might not even have enough left over power to make enough jet fuel to have the average plane on board flying one hour out of 24.
This is fabulous, now if I could get it for the iPad, tell it to lie about what kind of device I was so that I would not be stuck with the 'mobile' version of Gmail. That would be a usability win.
Windows Phone 8 release date and latest details
matrix.itasoftware.com is also where i check first.
I find horizontal scrolling to be very awkward. That change alone makes me dislike the new app store, with it's horizontal scrolling everywhere.

On the plus side, not having to type a password to install updates for apps is a major win.
I think that FizzBuzz is just filtering out incompetent applicants who shouldn't be trying for programming jobs to begin with. Joel on Software described this phenomenon back in 2005. [1] His key takeaway is that 99%+ of people applying for developer jobs may be unqualified for pretty much any coding job, but they keep applying anyway.

He describes how he and other companies get 200 applicants for most job postings, of which only one may actually be "good enough." I've seen numbers like that myself when on the hiring end. So everyone thinks they're hiring the top 0.5%, even though the same 199 losers are spamming their resumes to every job posting.

Well, a simple way to filter out that 199 is to apply FizzBuzz or equivalent.

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html
Patent holder attempts to put x-plane out of business