skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Followup question: Where can I find a list of companies (other than npm and Matasano) that don't interview with the stupid "write code on the whiteboard" method?

I've got some (1.5 years) experience, and I can write code. But put a whiteboard marker in my hand and ask me questions you know the answers to, in a high-stakes, high-pressure environment, and I fall apart.

Case in point: a recent technical interview I did, I did reasonably well until the last 1 hour session, which was the "code on the whiteboard" problem. I got code that functioned but wasn't fast enough. At home, after 1 google search and a few minutes, I solved the problem.

I'm definitely in favor of the "do a small project" type of code interview. It has its own pitfalls, but it's way better, IMO.
No, booking a ride with the intention to cancel is definitely wrong. My point is that Uber employees aren't doing that frequently enough to affect Lyft at all, so this can't be a plan on Uber's part.

It sounds like some Uber employees are just being assholes for no reason. That's unfortunate, but it's no reason to malign Uber itself. Every company has some assholes.
Before we repeat the same discussion[1] about Microsoft's recent hyperlapse prototype, note that the term hyperlapse was not coined by Microsoft[2].

Also note that they are using entirely different methods. Microsoft's approach analyzes the content of individual frames to model the camera's position and rotation in 3D space while Instagram uses the iPhone's gyroscope.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227321

[2] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlapse

via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227330

edit: On a side note, I'd like to point out that each approach has very interesting merits:

Microsoft's method can be applied to any video file, but requires more substantial CPU usage. Since instagram isn't analyzing video content, but instead cropping the input video based on gyroscope data, it requires much less processing time and can be done on the fly on a mobile device.

Microsoft's method can even render an entire scene from its 3D model (see their mountain climbing example where the helmet-mounted camera looks in an entirely different direction) while Instagram's method crops input video frames based on gyroscope data. This makes Microsoft's method more robust, but much less practical on a mobile device. Each method makes different trade-offs.
It says in his profile ...
No, Smartphone-Loss Anxiety Disorder Isn’t Real
I once created something similar and ran in to similar problems. What I did was use various event apis (meetup, etc) and populate events from those in to my app while allowing users to create their own.
Most candidates cannot take a day off and just work for somebody else -- employment contracts may prevent that.
I don't generally ask those kinds of questions. Mine are more of the algorithmic variety (i.e., given this problem, how do you solve it?). Having said that, the last 10% of getting the job is demonstrating that you know SOME programming. I may ask you some programming questions like the one you presented, just to see whether you know programming at all. If you got this right, you're 95% of the way in the door, as opposed to just 90% of the way in the door. It's not a deal breaker -- I can teach you the difference between 4 and '4' -- but it's a huge plus if you get it right.

Plus, like the article says, most people suck at tech screens, so that interviewer may have just been asking random questions with no clear idea of what they're looking for.
I thought the point of the FizzBuzz was that the asker doesn't care about 'clever' (for some definition of clever) answers, but rather, "Can this person actually write something which solves the problem, no matter how brain dead a solution"
Is this for native development only? Or can it be used with frameworks like unity for games too?
i love when he says "well, now im getting old, my capacity for hatred is getting less i suppose" ...i hope that happens to me too
Using BladeRF SDR to transmit and receive digital television broadcasts
Square is Raising $200M at a $6B Valuation
https://savannah.gnu.org/task/?13304
Hi everybody,

Australia has recently proposed new surveillance laws not unlike and if not worse than the NSA in the US. We are attempting to run a grass roots campaign to place pressure on legislators to change their minds on the matter before it's too late.

It would be great if we could follow some of the European nations in ruling it unconstitutional -> https://twitter.com/Steve_Dalby/status/498660816548143104/ph...

As an Aussie I've worked on many of the campaigns against mass surveillance in the US under the banner of http://taskforce.is.

I was hoping some of you might return the favor and help us raise awareness by supporting and if possible displaying the banner in September.
Interview with Max Planck (1931)
I think you've covered most of the reasons. Compression probably also reduces the actual storage size of files. They are probably also using some of their own storage outside of Amazon. Rarely accessed files could be moved to slower, cheaper storage facilities. But you wouldn't get the full answer without access to internal Dropbox documents.
C3 looks nice, but it'd be really great if the library didn't demand passing things in object format. Why can't we have something that implements chaining like D3? It seems a bit counter-intuitive...
Not sure if this is off-topic but my concern is related to technical interviews.

How do software engineers/devs/etc "stay in shape" for technical interviews? Let's say I wanna switch jobs and the first hurdle to cross is inevitably algorithms and data structures (for dev-centric roles) or something like operating systems/networks/whatever. How does one stay sharp on those _fundamental_ skills on a regular basis while working on a job, to avoid cramming everything in one week before the interview?
This is cool but why do we need it if Mercurial already supports pre-commit hooks?

For example we have this for refreshing redmine:

#!/bin/sh

PROJ=""

while [ $# -gt 0 ] ; do
case $1 in
--project)
shift
PROJ="&id=$1"
shift
;;
esac
done

echo $"Refreshing Redmine"

curl -s -o /dev/null "http://issues.qbixstaging.com/sys/fetch_changesets?key=jI$

and here is our PHP syntax check:

#!/bin/sh

### Configuration
HGBIN="/usr/bin/hg"
phpPath="/usr/bin/php"
tmpstyle=`/bin/mktemp -t`

### hg log style file
cat > $tmpstyle << EOF
changeset = "{files}\n"
file = "{file}\n"
EOF

### PHP syntax check
for f in `$HGBIN log -r $HG_NODE:tip --style $tmpstyle | grep -E "\.php[3-5]?$" | sort | uniq` ; do
res=`$HGBIN cat -r tip $f | $phpPath -l -d display_errors=1 -d error_reporting=4`
if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then
echo $f 1>&2
echo $res 1>&2
exit 1
fi
done
rm $tmpstyle

finally here is one for JS:

#!/bin/sh

### Configuration
HGBIN="/usr/bin/hg"
jshPath="/usr/local/bin/jshint"
tmpstyle=`/bin/mktemp -t`

### hg log style file
cat > $tmpstyle << EOF
changeset = "{files}\n"
file = "{file}\n"
EOF

### JS syntax check
for f in `$HGBIN log -r $HG_NODE:tip --style $tmpstyle | grep -E "\.js$" | sort | uniq` ; do
res=`$HGBIN cat -r tip $f | $jshPath --config /projects/.jshintrc --verbose - | grep "(E"`
st=$?
if [ $st -eq 0 ] ; then
echo $f 1>&2
echo $res 1>&2
exit 1
fi
if [ $st -gt 1 ] ; then
exit 1
fi
done
rm $tmpstyle
The website advertises that it "Block[s] access with parental controls and signal jamming". How the hell is this supposed to work?
Very, very suspicious.
It's a tough problem – no doubt about it. In v1, as we expect your nearby network to be quite small, we've focused heavily on your existing friends network (from facebook) and are trying to make that experience as good as possible. Inviting them, organising the events, etc.

In the past, just like you, we used facebook groups and/or messages/chats back and fourth to friends.

Hopefully the app will be good enough for people to start out with their existing friends and then more and more people nearby will show up.
We're going through a bit of a 'long September' period in the RC/Model world, as more and more newcomers to the hobby get things like the DJI Phantom, and then proceed to break all sorts of rules that have been a 'given' in the RC world previously. The sooner these users learn some manners, the better.
The glue that binds all your digital assets into one place
As a starting point, the protection layer has to have a higher privilege level than the operating system, e.g. hypervisor.
Disclaimer: I am not the writer of the article. I've only linked it.
To address your points: I'm not sure where to find someone with this expensive machine. I know where to find Shapeways.com pretty easily. And as I wrote above regarding your second paragraph, a precisely-printed key surely is more reliable (and easier to make) than the bent sheet metal and grocery loyalty cards.

I agree this argument is silly. Whether an Ikon SK6 lock is considered "umbumpable" and by who is pretty subjective. But this thread began with a commenter saying that none of this is news, and that it's all 50 years old. Hyperbole is indeed pretty annoying.
Also what is often ignored is teams need a range of personality types I found the Belbin tests fascinating.

When I did it my top role was plant and the course leader assumed I worked at BT Labs which was flattering (US equivalent would be Bell Labs).
No part of the rump kernel is about reinventing the wheel. It is about reusing existing OS code in other situations. So I don't exactly follow. This was a mailing list post so didn't have all the background...
This is nice, easy to use. It is however only using an extremely limited subset of d3 capabilities, which makes me wonder what added value is brought by the fact of making this d3 based compared to other "pure" and lightweight chart libraries which have the same functions [1]

My usual go to library: Flot http://www.flotcharts.org/
Ask HN: Book club style academic paper discussion forum?
Are there any online forums or discussion boards that features a book club style academic paper critic or discussion? The normal reading group meeting in my own lab focus too much on the field we do research in but I figure it would be a good idea to branch out using online resources and see what's cool out there
That guy has an incredibly dry humor. In another video he says right out that he's horribly bored by the interview.
Ah, looks like I am confused between quantum information and classical information (bits). We can create and destroy the latter.
It's native only but we are thinking about making a wrapper to make it interoperable between iOS and Unity. You should be able to drop it in despite unity but it may require some small extra work. We can help if you email support@mixpanel.com
Comments which reveal the intent of a block of code are very useful. They provide useful clues precisely when the code does not meet the expressed intent:

/* Dear Maintainer,
* I write the following in the sincere hope that
* it sorts the variables a, b and c in ascending order.
*/

if (a > b) swap(a, b);
if (b > c) swap(b, c);

They are useful when the code is complicated and the intent is not obvious. Or when there can be multiple plausible intents based on what the requirements are. Sometimes code contains implementations of requirements that are not spelled out in any requirements document. A high level requirement can break down into lower-level ones in umpteen ways. Whatever isn't in the detailed design document is only in the comments and the code. A programmer's statement of intent can in fact be a requirement specification: the only such document for that piece of code.
I'm not saying it's entirely bad, but it's something some users will want to disable for privacy concerns. The current model works well enough to allow widespread online banking and although this RFC will certainly make it more secure, there are also disadvantages.

I happen to know that Chrome hardcodes a list of EV certificates (or at least I read so a while ago), it could do the same for CAs. Or the browser could ask a central server which CA belongs to a certificate fingerprint. Not that different from OSCP except that it'll probably be run by the browser manufacturer instead of the CA.
Startups and Bird Shit
A huge part of it is the practice of overselling. The basic idea is that you have n customers who all want k gigabytes of space, but on average they each use only j gigabytes of the space. If that holds, then rather than having nk gigabytes available, you just need n(k/j) gigabytes to satsify their needs. After amortizing usage, the people who overbuy and barely use their space more than makes up for the users that max out their space. I don't know for sure if Dropbox does this, but most hosting companies do, and its a sensible practice (especially when your backbone is scalable).

Pairing with that, nobody actually uses all of their space. If you see yourself getting within some percentage of your usage, one generally will buy more to keep from hitting that upper bound. Nobody likes being in the dangerous red zone.

I believe dropbox also compresses your data serverside, so you really use up n*p gigabytes (where n is your local usage, and p is the compression ratio), but don't quote me on that.
'Insex' actually. But you were pretty close.
Interesting. I work at a company which focuses on finding circulating tumor cells, though using a very different method (a blood draw + tissue scan + image analysis. I work on the scanner and image analysis portions.) We currently have a significantly higher success rate than that of this device (71%), but we also have a turnaround time of a couple of weeks.

However, we have found that morphology (nuclear and cellular) and the amount of epithelial tissue present are important indicators and predictors of a patients current health and future medical state. With this approach neither may be ascertained (as far as I can tell. The raw size of a cell is not directly proportional to the amount of cancerous tissue present). They can however detect the number of rare events, which is a large part of the equation.
Free DNS hosting (the new DynDNS)
This is really cool, do you have any real life examples?
Some one more seasoned would not work for free during a weekday.

See, I can play that game too.

Besides, this was a contrived problem. If you want to say "I refuse to solve any coding problems while interviewing for a software position", then fair enough. Good luck finding one. I think this was a total of perhaps 3 hours of my time, and was good enough to get an onsite? And it was time I -enjoyed-. Unlike most phone screens, timed interviews, etc.
Interesting, thanks.

The registered email address getting the redirection to it's own phone pays for that service by the minute... at a rate comparable to SkypeOut. This is TollFree at really great rate.

Oh, did I mention, once you have an account, you can also dial out to normal phone number using simple URLs again... and pay for that. But this is really an add-on.
Google just made its SOC 3 security audit report public for the first time
If I had a sponsor and an employee was criticizing the decision to say something to that employee would be based on how the criticism was done. If the person mentioned that they just didn't like Google's surveillance program then I would let it go. But if they ran around yelling about Google is evil because of said programs then we would have to have a talk.

If I am running a small company and your personal opinions are costing me money it would be crazy for me to keep you on. Not saying that is what happened here but that is more of a response from some of the comments I have read.
This is great. Signed up right away.

If anyone in Seattle wants to play some basketball near greenwood / phinney ridge area, I'm hosting at 7pm tonite at the Greenwood Elementary outdoor courts! Event is public on this app.
Off contract the phone is $700. You can usually find it on Amazon for ~$500-600.

There's like a $10/mo discount buying the phone then bringing it to VZ to use. At a $600 difference in price (vs. $99 on contract), you can't make the difference up with a $240 reduction in service cost.

So yeah, technically you're right, it's $99 with a 2 year contract, the problem is that people do know what these devices actually cost. Hell, you can look them up on Amazon and ebay while you're in the store and the sales reps will even help you do it. It's just not always cheaper to roll your own.

The problem with Amazon's phone is that when you go phone shopping you just don't see one in the phone stores. If they can only be bought off contract, your effective price for the phone is still north of $400, at least on Verizon. Not even the latest iPhone or Galaxy <whatever> sells in that price range on contract.
I know several people who have had allergies disappear after a major diet change. My dad, on the other had, is suffering increasingly from allergies in his advanced age (>70) and refuses to even consider the notion that diet has anything to do with it, and won't even experiment.
This is essentially the approach Dwolla has taken versus other payment gateways. The issue is does Square want to be in the business of being a credit card company or a POS provider?
When did the idea of a shared resource hit its final bullet and got buried?

This whole idea of hyper-capitlising every tid bit of everyday life, sacrificing social etiquette to the altar of economic theory has gone too far. If you try to assign ownership of such things as reclining right (as if such a right ever existed), then where will you stop? Are you going to negotiate and pay me for my right to repeatedly bang my knees in teh back of your seat? How about paying me to stop humming loudly just behind your back?

It's not about monetisation nor economic optimization. It's about being well-behaved in society. You want to recline your seat? Why not ask if the person sitting behind you minds? What about settling on a position that at least partially satisfies you both? The space in the cabin is shared. Stop acting like a child or sociopath and be mindful of others. Stop making everything be about your wallet.
"Completely prevents the NSA or hackers from monitoring" That is an insane claim.
Would it be reasonable to charge women more, an ethnical minority, or people with blonde hair? No, of course it wouldn't. That's why.

Being born tall is out of a person's control. It isn't a choice. Why should they pay 50% more as a result?

If you (or anyone else) thinks it is different from the other "out of your control" categories I listed then explain /why/ that is the case. Because from my perspective charging tall people more and charging e.g. women more aren't different at all and both equally unreasonable.
Mozilla ousted Eich because a vocal group was calling for his head. They knew about his donation for years and didn't care. The decision was pragmatic, not ethical.
First, it's interesting that Mixpanel and Optimizely (both YC companies) are starting to compete in this space. Optimizely has mobile A/B testing as well[0].

Second, what seems to be an obvious need I haven't seen is A/B testing notifications. Notifications seem to be the "email drip campaigns" of the mobile world, so it seems like A/B testing both the frequency and content of those could bring big wins.

[0] https://www.optimizely.com/mobile
I agree that patently obvious comments are not necessary... and descriptive naming helps avoid patently obvious documentation... But I disagree with adding more code to replace what would be a single line of documentation. To me that's insanity.

My teams find more and more value from documentation as they are forced to return to code months/years later.

And commit logs as the place to document performance issues? Seems like an easy way to make sure that a "weird" bit of code gets removed, and breaking your app.

As with all things, ideologies and blanket statements suck. I think what was talked about in this article could've been much better communicated if it wasn't so polarizing.

I've found comments are only not added or updated when people feel rushed. Or a culture which doesn't put value in them... Which is a problem with one's organization not the act of writing comments.

P.s. This is an edit: isn't it rather peculiar someone tasked with annotating all text doesn't annotate their code? Irony?
Parallels Desktop 10: More Mobile Efficiency, More Ease of Use
Agreed. So when someone answers it wrong, while claiming some knowledge of Javascript, that's kind of a major ding against them.
I agree that it's a stark illustration of the limits of the insurance model. Nationalizing the health care industry is itself fraught, though.

I remember a Gladwell New Yorker essay that related dental care to poverty and economic mobility, so I'll add right away that this isn't a small problem.
Find a Local 3D Printer near you
Think of it this way: now you have a nicely curated list of people who's opinions you know are completely worthless, and if you ever run into any of these people in person you have advance warning that they're moronic!
Thanks, that sounds even better.

What's with the lack of delta syncs in all these systems? As far as I know, neither Google Drive nor OneDrive do it. Now you're saying ownCloud doesn't do it either. I didn't even think to look at it for oneCloud because obviously they'd support it.

I consider it to be an essential feature, to the point that I won't bother with something that doesn't support it. I guess I'm unusual in that respect.
Downloaded the app, first screens look good. I would definitely use something like this, living near a huge park in a big city, and being very active. However:

- I don't have Facebook, how do I create an account?

- Do you really, really need accounts at all? And if you do, can't you at least just show me activities happening around me, and let me sign up later?

I'd love to give more feedback but I'm stuck outside your app.
Dropbox used to say they use Amazon S3 [1], but now they just say "storage servers are provided by a managed service provider" [2] which could mean they found someone cheaper than S3, or that another company is managing the infrastructure for Dropbox. I always imagined Dropbox would move on from S3, and Drew even said back in 2010 that "We may not be on s3 forever, and will build our own store in addition, but for now this lets us focus on both the client software and the performance of the layer we’ve developed on top of s3." [3]

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20140101095459/https://www.dropb...

2. https://www.dropbox.com/help/7

3. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/dropbox-review-invites-and-7-qu...
Using basic Unix commands in trivial ways, am I missing something here?
>"director of engineering",

...at Genius.
That diagram doesn't show how Visa/Mastercard make their money (unless they act as issuers or acquirers). Where is their cut?
I think you have it there.

A terabyte is a nice round number, but I think getting a TB into cloud storage would be challenging, since most people have lower upload than download allowances.

At 1 Mbit/sec upload, for instance, it would take 8000 sec to upload a GB or 8 million sec to upload a TB, which amounts to a few months of continuous uploading.

That's a serious project for most people.

As for the other factors you'd better believe that they use compression, deduplication, special deals and every other trick in the book to bring down costs.

On top of all that, Dropbox has received over $1B in funding so it is very possible that they are losing money to build market share.

So far as cost analysis, I'd also look at the networking costs with AWS, since those are going to be significant. AWS doesn't charge for ingress, but it does charge about 5 cents to move a GB out at high volumes, and that can add up if a lot of stuff is being moved out.