skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The things I'm seeing in the NYC area (particularly digital advertising agencies - but the lines between those, 'design' agencies, and general software development firms have become so blurry that it's hard to tell them apart anymore) point to some other issues causing a squeeze as well. Top of the list is an absolutely brutal level of competition. There are so many firms out there chasing the same business - from your top-tier Madison avenue firms who have gone digital, to your 3 person, 1 hit-wonder shop in DUMBO - that clients have these companies strapped tightly over a very large barrel. Companies are bending over backwards with just about everything: allowing late payments, cut-rate deals, and sometimes even free work for even moderately complicated jobs (in the hopes that if they properly prostrate themselves, they will be given paying work in the future), which really hurts bottom lines - and the ability to offer competitive salaries.

I'm also seeing the same talent flight as the author of the piece, not just with designers, but also devs and good producers/project managers. At some places I've seen, companies avoid certain clients because they fear poaching by their own client(!) Is it too conspiratorial to think that talent-hungry clients are doing trial-run projects to try out and entice potential employees? A couple years ago, I would have thought that was crazy. Now I'm not so sure.

My personal opinion is that a shakeout in this/these industries is coming in the next few years. That tide goes out, and a pile of firms will go with it. There's no way the numbers are sustainable. Something has to give here.
No offense, but this sounds more like a self-control problem than an issue with technology.
When I finish a long contract it usually takes me a couple of interviews before I get to the point where I can do good. So I started lining up interviews at marginally interesting opportunities first to use them as "practice".
IE - I browsed for Market Share. Python 3 - several years of carefully watching mindshare, assessing the challenges with going to Python 3 (mostly the more cognitively complex (if somewhat more consistent) challenges with dealing with Unicode/Strings/Bytes, plus my experience shifting from Python 2 to Python 3, cross referenced with watching new application uptake of Python 3 + 3rd party Library Support).

And IPv6 is my full time job. I teach it to a lot of people, and see it deployed all over the world - so I have a pretty good sense of whether it's going to happen (it will), and how long it will take (quite a while, Carrier Grade NAT could actually keep IPv4 going forever)
I've been using wireless charging for nearly two years on my Lumia 920. And for the past year, my wife's Lumia Icon has been doing the same. I picked up a couple more charging plates when she switched to Windows Phone.

Now that I've used wireless charging, I'll never go back. Connecting wires to charge is so 2012. I want my Surface Pro to charge wirelessly. And my Tesla Model S (well, that is, if I had one).
I was experimenting with the idea of adding 'slices'. They let you do map like transformations on arrays. https://github.com/icholy/JsonPatch.js

/foo/1:3/bar

translates to

foo.slice(1, 3).map(function (obj) { return obj.bar; });
This might sound like a bit of a glib response, but just go with it. It sucks, but there is nothing you can do except to keep improving for your next opportunity.

For what it's worth, earlier this week I massively failed whiteboarding two should-have-been-dead-easy questions. Nerves jumped up and bit me. I'm talking near total meltdown in which I complicated a task as easy as swapping two variables using a single temporary.

What can I do about it at this point? Nothing. It's a tad embarrassing, but I'm already moving on. I've finally started reading Okasaki, and am making a project out of concurrently learning Elixir and some distributed algorithms.

I'll probably fail a technical interview again at some point in the future. But behind the scenes, I'll already be a better programmer than I was at that point in time. What else can I do?
I certainly would not want a bracelet that tracks so much information from a corporation that is known to cooperate with the NSA. The bracelets they force repeat sex offenders to wear track less information about them. The only way I would consider using such a device was if both the hardware and software were available for public review.
Crashed for me browsing that website with win 8.1. Thanks, microsoft. It actually rebooted my computer. Only microsoft can reboot your computer from their own website.
Wow, impressive! Did anything build on that do you know?
Cool. Would be interesting to see if that comes up as a common request; we have found the ability to do real-time and historic to be interesting for query-ability for system data.

Have you seen the other neat functionality about the Akamai query system? They allow (actually require) devs to create callbacks that get exposed as query tables to do debugging (vs letting devs on machines as first or second line of debugging).

It's an interesting paradigm though again the way they use it, like osquery, is only real-time and using the psql/OpenTSDB method allows for history as well as real-time.

osquery (and Akamai Query's) syntax is definitely simpler. We do plan to add a logical schema to map tags in OpenTSDB to logical columns to help with that.
I wonder if integration with Xbox One is on the cards? It would seem to be natural given the fitness side of Kinect; if this has a HRM integrated perhaps that could be sent while you are doing your P90X workout or some such...
Flipboard Integrates Zite's Topics in 3.0 Release
Does anyone know which home appliance stores and where? I'm assuming Tokyu Hands or Yodobashi Camera. I'd like to check one out in the wild.
You mean revenue wise? Is it anything more than a rounding error? (Serious question.)
The new model was called the 158 (and the 168). There was a DAT box for the 155 and 165 to gain virtual memory (aka DAT).
I failed to find anything concrete in Koch's argument. Its funny because at some level he is right - there is this thing called consciousness, but even when the most rational people try to describe it they inevitably sound unscientific. I imagine that before Darwin everyone must have sounded crazy when they talked about biology. I guess the field of Neuroscience is still waiting for a revelation.
I had my shot at Google in 2012, made it to the on-site rounds. I thought I did well, but I read all the rejection stories online so I wasn't holding my breath. Still, only my wife knew about the interviews; didn't tell the rest of my family. Back then, I felt like scoring that job would just make my life complete. 3 weeks later I got the "Sorry, not this time". Even though I thought I was ready for rejection, it still hit me kinda hard. But because of how hard I prepared for Google, I was able to nail the interview that came afterwards and ended up in a great company. And the experience from this job has given me some insight to what Google was probably looking for.

It feels rough at first, but don't take it personally. Keep doing what you love and it'll be alright. Last I heard, you can try about once a year or so. In the meanwhile, keep a list of other places you'd like to work and try for them. You might even find another gig so awesome that you don't hunger for G or A anymore. That's kinda what happened to me.

Time will heal.
Yes, that's likely the rationale.

This is the counter argument to the freedom argument: good, consistent design and UX seems to require totalitarianism. Otherwise you get a confusing hodge podge of junk.

I'm starting to see this whole area as a major 21st century problem in computing. How do we have freedom, security, and good UX at the same time?
Mobile Internet Performance Map
I am sure the Microsoft employees which will make up about 95% of the market share of this thing will be happy (until it goes the way of the Kin, Zune, etc).
I mean a sharp, unexpected deflation as it actually happens in the real world. In the real world, deflation starts with either a collapsing debt or asset bubble. Bank runs wipe out deposits, a housing bubble bursts, the stock market crashes, etc. Suddenly people realize they are not as rich as they thought they were. A university endowment realizes it has just fallen by 20%. So everyone cuts spending. The easiest thing to cut is stuff like buying cars or designing new buildings or new construction projects. So when the endowments fell, two-thirds of the architects in Boston got laid off, because the construction projects all stalled and there was no work for them to do. Autoworkers got laid off because people held off on buying cars. Etc. etc.
I'm wondering if data could be distributed ahead of time in an encrypted fashion and then only a key needs to be published/pushed, which is a far more trivial thing to get out to many people simultaneously.
Isn't this much more a question of reliability and track record than 10% performance differences?
Yeah, I have run into that too previously, with "QA" on the Sass port not being as good as one might ideally like.

But, hey, look, they already released 3.3.0.1 of the sass version fixing the problem, 3 hours after the ticket was filed, that's pretty responsive, sometimes that's the most you can ask for.

(Part of the issue is it's not JUST a Sass version, people expect a Sass version that works with Compass with or without Rails, and that works with Rails without Compass, and that works with Sprockets without Rails, and that works standalone with nothing but Sass just compiling css like the Less version, and each context has it's own picadillos).
I'll be the dick. On paper, it's helped me, yes (girl problems that would have run $16K by June just mainly for tests): I met an OOP early (yay! Didn't even know what OOP=out-of-pocket WAS!), so after that I didn't have to pay anything until next year! (Who's heard of such a thing?!)

But the hospitals/docs didn't file right, or didn't get preauths? Basically, providers aren't getting paid; and while AHCA says "ignore bills you've met your OOP!", I'm seeing bills from people I've never seen before because while a doc was "in coverage area", their test readers weren't, and I've actually been served a DEBT WARRANT (by the police!) now. So basically, I'm paying what AHCA said NOT to pay because I don't want to be sued (hire lawyer, get tripped up in legalese, ...it's just cheaper to PAYOLA); plus, I figure radiologists or labs did their job and should get paid (plus their phone calls are scary). I find the entire thing ridiculous, but the debt warrant is scary. NGL.
I think that patch updates could be closer to the mongo syntax myself... I also don't like the "path" following slash notation over dot notation.

I'm also not entirely sure about adjustments to arrays with this syntax.
I'm surprised so many are drawn to the industrial design of this. It seems quite clunky with the electronics distributed throughout the band. The flat portion is also too long.

Microsoft wants to sell you a gadget while Apple wants to sell you a watch.
I emailed you, but also wanted to express in the comments that I would be definitely interested in idempotent json patches.
This looks like the perfect form-factor for a more powerful wearable swim watch. Most of the other options are bulkier or too limited in their feature set. Unfortunately it looks like it's only splash resistant.
I once wrote JSON.diff and JSON.patch functions to do this thing.

Then I kind of stopped because I didn't see the point
Oh, and if you're helpful to Nestle with regard to your office, you get a free machine for home

doesn't it amount to offering kickbacks?
I tried to use foundation on two separate occasions. Each time, basic features were broken (or completely missing!) out of the box, and when I tried to investigate, the code was so tangled and awkward that I either abandoned foundation, or implemented the feature from scratch myself.

Bootstrap is pleasant to work with and extend. Each of the javascript components are simple, isolated, and well thought out.

But don't take my word for it!

The "affix" plugin in bootstrap:
https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/blob/master/js/affix.js

The equivalent in foundation:
https://github.com/zurb/foundation/blob/master/js/foundation...
Can I assume you don't own a smartphone, then?
My uncle managed to get into a nuclear power plant with the wrong clearance tag. He was working on two facilities and grabbed the wrong tag when leaving the office.

What he said was scariest is that anyone with access to a commercial printer and lamination machine could easily reproduce them too.

So many people come and go from your average facility. I mean you can get past most gates just by landing a job at the right landscaping company if security is that strict.

It also sounds like the target was in a shared office building, so they likely had minimal influence over security procedures.
This looks intriguing. Much more so than Apple Watch. However, the thickness of the band has me concerned. I stopped using UP because the band was thick enough it made my hand fall asleep when typing. (Having to take it off negated one of its main purposes alarm.)
https://www.npmjs.org/package/json-diff-patch
I looked several times for the battery life but couldn't find it. Actually, for me, the 2 day battery life is the killer feature - it means I'm almost certain to get a full 16 hours out of it - which is pretty damn hard to believe given it has a GPS radio in it. That's something the Apple Watch won't have - which means if you are going out for a run - Microsoft Band will be there for you, but you won't be able to track with the Apple Watch.
Most serializers will omit undefined (I don't believe it's allowed as a JSON value. That said, I think null should be sufficient. Though, MongoDB already defines update syntax pretty well, and would just assume follow that syntax.

http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/modify-documents/

It's not perfect, but it is pretty widely used, and well thought out enough for this purpose.
If I can get a solid 16 hours out of it - this will be a killer product.
I'd barely call the iWatch a watch. It fails at what makes a watch a watch -- being able to tell time immediately. The iWatch display is off most of the time to conserve battery.
... no. Not even in the same category. Not even close to the same price range.
You forgot the Microsoft Courier.
A cheap, reliable, simple milk jug design, mass-produced until the marginal cost just vanishes.

Educational fucking videos. Understanding the conditions where food is cultivated. Growing stronger crops.

This is just beautifully simple, realistic and down-to-earth.
Timely post, I just heard back from Facebook today and didn't get an offer. I was pretty crestfallen at first, but I am kinda realizing that interviewing is really somewhat of a crapshoot.

At the time, I thought I did pretty well but as I went back over the questions, I realized that I missed a lot of the sort of "tricks" of the questions that they wanted to see.

It was really simple stuff, using a hash where I should have used a trie and not seeing an edge case initially, maybe not being super efficient in a design problem. After thinking about it, the result could have been drastically different (worse or better) using a different 4 questions.

CS is a broad problem space, its not surprising to come across something that you fail at and in my mind, thats to be expected. While this time luck wasn't on my side with a few questions I didn't do amazing at, it may be better next time. Its kinda crappy how arbitrary it can seem, but I don't know if there are much better alternatives.

I have a Google interview tomorrow, so I will try my best, but also remind myself that there is a lot of chance involved.
You can know keys/paths but nothing else. Or you might have user-specific parts that won't be concurrently modified, but the base JSON doc might be modified by others. You'd have to have the latest version to do a text-based patch.

A text-based diff doesn't really gain much for what it loses in use cases.
Why bother?
There are tons of places better than G and A!
This just means they don't fit you. You did nothing wrong, it's like relationship.

Take a break, then carry on!
I'm pointing out flaws in the "standard."
I am currently working at a company that is widely considered to be amongst the best in the world in its area of expertise. I interviewed 6 times, with 6 different teams, over the course of about 8 months, until I got an offer from my current team.

What's interesting is that in retrospect, my current role is far more interesting and demanding on all fronts than any of the other teams I interviewed for.

It's hard, but keep pushing. The main thing that differentiates successful people from the others is persistence.
Please define "screwed". Paying more than you take out does not count, provided older people are paying less than they take out (I hope I don't need to remind you that young people eventually turn into old people).

I mean, it sounds like you're just pointing out that, if health insurance/coverage is mandatory, then you are getting 'screwed' if you don't use the healthcare system. That's like saying I'm getting 'screwed' by public transportation if I own a car.
Giants Win
Are existing Zite users (with hundreds of manually selected topics) going to be migrated to Flipboard?
Do those apps support HealthKit and Google Fit?
While everyone is trying to make a watch that looks as traditional as possible, Microsoft is thinking radically different for how the future watch should look likes. That's some guts.

At $200 this looks like great device with built-in sensors including GPS and UV that also talks to whatever phone you own. I also like the fact that heart rate monitor is always on. Addition of barometer could have been nicer, however.

Other tidbits:

-Screen looks too small to do much of an interaction so I'm guessing type of apps would be mostly notification types.

-I seriously hate all these stock photos and videos. Marketing seems to be out of ideas and creativity yet again. Show the f*ing product, not random faces.

-48 hr battery life

-Cortana works only for Windows Phone

-It's supposedly made for the right hand which is very weird.

-Sleep quality monitoring seems pretty cool

-The whole thing is projected as health device and makes me feel that it's designed for fitness nuts. This is going to severely limit the audience and very bad marketing strategy. Apple's watch is much more human/teens oriented that anyone wearing watches wouldn't mind to wear regardless of its health related features and probably mostly just for fun (send my heartbeat!).
While I agree with Richard Stallman about the importance of freedom, this is more the old issue of building your business on someone else's platform, and your cash flow now being in the hands of a completely inconsistent company. This is not about censorship or monopolistic business practices - remember that Apple also makes money off each copy of PCalc.
It's more complex than that: http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2009/it-is-okay-to-use-post
That's very limiting. So I'm suppose to use the same Json library on various platforms for client as well as server? And what have you really gained?
This is not exactly same, but similar in some ways to IBM's S/38, OS/400 or whatever they call it now... In this OS (and last I touched it was 15 years ago, so things may have changed) there were no "files" - everything was a database table, and that was the only way you could store anything and it was how you for the most part interoperated with the system, i.e. the OS was essentially a relational DB. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_i
They are chasing after slightly (but not completely) different markets. This is a (very capable) fitbit competitor. Apple is definitely targeting fashion. Microsoft is marketing a < $200 band. Apple will be selling a $5K+ Gold Watch amongst its offerings.

In some ways, the Microsoft watch is actually much more capable than the Apple Watch (Hello, untethered GPS!) - but nobody is going to put it on the front page of vogue.
A number of Bitcoin services have gone under after being hacked. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/18/history-of...
The overall quality of the fitbit (both as a band and a clip) is complete crap. My wife, hardly a heavy user of such, has had the clip die within two months, the band (a replacement) started acting up within about 3 months. Bought at two separate times from two different places. Friends have similar stories.

I haven't delved into wearables yet. I mostly have used my iPhone 5s (now 6) for the motion tracking, but it certainly doesn't catch everything (let alone doesn't catch vitals) since I don't carry it everywhere.
Ah yes the argument by neat one-liner.

Now let's move on to the truly relevant and constructive activity: comparing which language has best-looking toy quicksort implementation
I belong to a certain group of people that I'm guessing many smartwatch makers are targeting.

That is, I've not worn a watch for years, mostly because a) I've never needed time to be any more convenient than checking my phone, and b) watches tend to be more about style than function, and I care almost zero about the former and almost everything about the latter.

Now that the "watch" is becoming functional, it really is more of a gadget, and that's the only thing drawing me back to considering having something attached to my wrist again.

Of course, I also realize there is a group that does care more about style, and maybe these people aren't the target for the more "gadgety" type smartwatches.

One of the reasons I think the Apple Watch Edition is a joke is that it's trying to target both groups (the other reason being the ridiculous name). And I don't think there is that large of an audience that is willing to spend that much for style + functionality -- if they want to spend that much, they likely care more about style, and will stick to a traditional watch.

So if gadget = functionality, then I say "Finally. Sign me up."
How do I access my posted thoughts?
Getting a good sense of a person is really difficult, especially through something as contrived as these technical interviews. And any company that sees enough applicants that they can afford it will err on the side of rejecting candidates even if they know they're probably good, if for whatever reason they're not quite sure. I've interviewed people that blew me away and then seen them rejected. I don't intend that as a criticism really because I can't imagine a hiring process, however well meaning, that doesn't have this issue to some extent. It's just how these things work.

When you don't get hired though, almost always you will err on the side of blaming yourself. I've heard about people blaming the process but I've never met someone in person who did that. And actually I suspect there's a Dunning–Kruger effect working where the more qualified you are the more likely you are to turn a rejection inwards and blame yourself.

I'm not saying that's what happened here, I don't know. Just keep in mind that hiring anywhere, including at amazon and google, can't be a fair process to the candidate. And you're the least objective observer of your own performance.