skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, we don't do the puzzle questions, and I agree that those are not useful to determine the level of software engineering experience a candidate has.

However...

99 times out of 100 you could catch that engineer by talking to him about technical aspects of past projects he worked on.

That does not work for us.

We must put each and every candidate in front of a keyboard, and bang out at least a little code.

We had one candidate, recently graduated with an MS in CS. Nice personality, good talker in general. The candidate seemed to understand CS and could explain how to solve problems.

However, even with repeated prompting, I could not get this person to even type in a loop to start to solve the problem presented.

We've interviewed multiple candidates with a BS in CS or similar who also spectacularly failed at doing even basic coding tasks.

Some people are really great talkers. They really do sound like they know what they are doing. But that does not mean they can actually do anything.
...though sometimes they strangely don't all want to invest in a slick social deals pyramid or revenue-free chat app or whatever else is hot at the moment...

You can't argue with returns, and "slick" VC returns trump Smallville's every day of the week.
Lenovo Z40 Laptop Computer Review
Finally someone with reason.
Ask HN: Internet without censorship?
So I'm here in China behind the Great Firewall and I'm wondering, for you network engineers out there, are there any new upcoming technologies that would fully anonymize internet traffic? Or even just slow down censorship and MITM attacks?

Over the years, I've tried VPN over L2TP/IPSec, PPTP, OpenVPN, VPN wrapped with Stunnel, SSH tunneling, SSH tunneling with obfsproxy, Tor, a variety of professional VPN providers, etc. All of these (with the exception of Tor) just seems to encrypt traffic and transmit it through the existing internet infrastructure. I'm wondering if there's any technologies or developments on the horizon that would enable more of an decentralized mesh-like internet, something a bit less vulnerable to censorship?
Does anyone know if artificial sweeteners (aspartame etc) have the same effects? Why can't I find any recipes for cooking with aspartame instead of sugar? (I tried but couldn't find any)
you mean your going to remove all your backdoors this year? or is this more freedom suppression systems? i dont believe those kids on the computer are really a threat to you, like you were told. cant you just go back to catching bank robbers like you used to, when you were the good guys? why do the police never follow up on identity theft and hacking of bitcoin-business websites, but you have bots controlling r/conspiracy. why do you even have upvote and downvote bots anyway? why do you have a JIDF-equivalent posting task force? are you going to remove them to increase security? are you going to release your db of 0-day-exploits to increase security?

pro tip if you answer wrong to more than 1 of these you really mean freedom supression, don't you?

dont tread on me bro
11 IoT Programming Languages Worth Knowing
It isn't impractical, but our cursory searches revealed few images of the museum. Unfortunately it has been closed for over a decade, meaning very few people with digital cameras have been in there in recent years. But, we can use scanned slides and frames from videos too.
Bootstrapping and founders equity?
We are using similar software. In fact, we will use a suite of tools to generate the models. Agisoft's PhotoScan, VisualSFM, SURE... just to name a few.
A definite case of http://xkcd.com/927/

If you want to replace bash (in an environment where Perl, Python, and Ruby all exist in a space for more advanced scripting) you have to do a hell of a lot to improve on the existing standards.

Then again, a fun weekend project playing with compilers is a valid use of one's time, even if the product doesn't change the world forever :)
The Colossal Strangeness of China’s Most Excellent Tourist City
Mobile application development company
You might find some resonance with my current project. Problem: http://akkartik.name/about. Ongoing attempt at a solution: http://github.com/akkartik/mu.
wish they'd make one for firefox
You are not really helping the issue, you are doing that "I support you, but you are so wrong".

The whole "outside observer" smells like slut shaming to me. The article talkings about how to make the social environment in tech better, the clinical definition of rape is not the issue.
Hijacking the left and right arrow keys turns filling out forms into a frustrating experience.
”There is a lesson here for ambitious system architects: the most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough.”[1]

In order to replace a popular system it’s often not enough to be 20% or 40% better, you need to be like 300% better.

[1] http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/plan9.html
But it can become rape, pretty easily if you are a person in power which sadly often means a man even if he isn't the boss.
Solar-powered plane takes off in first round-the-world attempt
I was there on business about a month ago. Lovely city.
There is a whole field of algorithms that are best described recursively where the recursion depth is guaranteed to be logarithmic. Sorting algorithms like merge sort are a basic example. Using recursion for those is fine.

Apart from that I tend to agree with you (for the vast majority of programming contexts).
I believe the documentation is installed in /sys/doc.
At least 9Front does so.
This is one of those ideas that makes complete sense on paper but would never fly in real life.

I'm sure even for crap fast food customers attach value to the fact that their food is prepared by humans as a sort of quality assurance.
> The only justification for the fire bombings and nuclear bombings that has any possible merit is that they were necessary to end the war.

That doesn't work in real life. In order to know what level of force is necessary, one has to have a perfect knowledge of the opposition. That isn't possible, so you always respond with more force than you think in necessary - overengineering the carnage.

> So how could the bombings possibly be necessary to end the war when the war might have been ended by other means?

If we are going to play the what if game, why stop at the firebombs? What if Japan didn't attack? What if the US didn't apply economic pressure? What if Japan didn't stomp all over Asia? The what if game is pretty boring.
To imply that this MH370 was pre planned using knowledge of the fact that an Immarsat sattelite low on fuel would "wobble" and thus lead to misleading doppler data etc. is SO far fetched as to be out of hand ridiculous.

YET, MH370 definitely is FOUL PLAY, and not an "accident" or even series of accidents aboard.

The only thing i can think of is that the predominant global authorities of our time (US & anglosphere) DON'T WANT this plane to be found. Leading a side show into nothingness (or vacant areas) would be easy to do, especially if you KNOW where the plane really is. Question is WHY?
Doing consultant taxes in Japan
I moved to Tokyo this year, and have been consulting for a company. The company will not be assisting me with my taxes unfortunately. HN probably isn't the best place to ask this kind of question, but I'm struggling to find resources online, and assume many of you are at consulting gigs and have the same lack of Japanese experience to do something as tense as taxes.

1) What is the best course of action?

2) Does anyone have recommendations for a cheap, English-speaking tax preparation office?
Mobile applications developers
Yes, I tend to agree with you on both counts …
Quantitative and statistical approaches are unlikely to uncover poetic aesthetics by themselves. If economics has turned out to be hard to predict, after more than a century of quantitative efforts in that direction, I don’t hold out much hope for poetry or literature in general.
I was thinking more along the lines of machine learning and language learning as starting points.
On the second point, this is quite an exciting view to take in my opinion. The far end of the spectrum is that we begin to see AI as “subjects” in their own right. Not necessarily “flesh-and-bones” subjects who are human-like, but different entities with their own possibilities, and yet capable of interfacing with humans. Would we find their aesthetic tastes understandable? Could we learn to love it?
Since we are specifically talking about conditions in the tech industry the legal definition of rape doesn't matter at all. I would say it's actually harmfull to bring it up at all.
MyMeedia
عرض المصارعة wwe raw 9/3/2015
My sugar cravings don't feel like cravings, they feel more like hunger. I can eat a delicious meal of whole foods and be full to the point that it's physically uncomfortable, but I still feel ravenously hungry for sugar. It's like I have two separate appetites.

I am currently in the process of trying to quit sugar.
Initially this was the reason and I still do this, but it should be noted that Racket, for example, will treat the following examples exactly the same and will do just fine with the non-tail recursive example (as far as I can tell):

(define (sum/recursive/opt lst [sum 0])
(if (null? lst)
sum
(sum/recursive/opt (rest lst)
(+ sum (first lst)))))

(define (sum/recursive/non-opt lst)
(if (null? lst)
0
(+ (first lst)
(sum/recursive/non-opt (rest lst)))))

I don't use any other variants of Scheme with any meaningful frequency, but I still use the uppermost variant because I'm just used to it.
Daylight Saving Time, why do we even bother?
Could this Bug knife easily be swallowed and smuggled into prison?

A: Yes - Gage answered on February 20, 2015
I'm not quite sure I follow. My reaction was to the article was shock, when I read that she was raped repeatedly. Then, like most people, I assume, the question that springs to mind is: how can that happen? It violates a lot of assumptions we have about civilized society.

One way of making sense of it is determining that an unlawful act wasn't committed. Then, yeah, you can't call the cops, it's not "really rape" (according to the law), and it's terrible because there's no recourse without destroying one's career.

I'm not saying that's what happened to the OP. Just explaining why the definition of rape matters. If it was legal rape, then we're left wondering even more why going to the cops wasn't an option. If it wasn't legal rape, then it's much more difficult.

(And in case my writing wasn't clear, I'm suggesting that a $500 bar tab could be called a mugging, if you didn't willingly pay for it. But the law wouldn't consider that a mugging. So if someone meant a colleague pulled a knife on them repeatedly, then yeah, the response is "what about the cops"? Whereas in the bar tab scenario, I can " see the issue " of no recourse. Same way that you might sleep with someone because you felt you had to, but the law wouldn't consider that a rape.[1] I'm not saying this is what happened to the OP, at all, just responding to your questioning of why HN would discuss the definitional aspects.[2])

1: This is further aggravated by some people thinking rape is over claimed, perhaps in response to other people suggesting that two drunk people having sex means they taped raped each other. And by extension, that means people on permanent medication, who are never "sober" are always being raped. Totally unrelated to the OP, yet a driver of rather useless discussion.

2: And I probably am terrible for saying this, but I just don't tend to empathize with such stories much. The huge amount of suffering in the world overall (let alone the disgusting implications of MWI) has numbed me. Plus the situation described is not very relatable to me. While I experienced the outrage when personal (eg when something happened to my daughter), other accounts tend to provoke a more... distanced reaction. Having nothing to contribute or say regarding the actual problem, I'll respond to branching topics like yours. Terrible as that is, perhaps that's another explanation for the type of discussion you find here. And I'm probably not the only guy on HN with similar feelings, maybe.
Google "glucose toxicity" and you will get many papers describing it under certain conditions or in excess amounts.
Edward Tufte's whole set, and Stephen Few's online newsletters and articles.
Could you elaborate (or perhaps you already have a write up) as to why you made the change?

Just started using postman myself. This is the first I have heard of PAW.
Apple Design Chief believes you wouldn't like a bigger battery in your iPhone
Daylight savings doesn't seem to save energy, according to several studies
So... Kind of like the risk you take when you copy and paste code without first attempting to understanding it? I can't say that I've ever read through a proof just to nab a formula without even thinking through the material.
You can also read the original USENET post on comp.os.research here: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.os.research/fw2frykLjOI...
Things Every JavaScript Developer Should Know
I totally agree but Jersey 2.x and Dropwizard still support Java 7, so the examples should also work with Java 7.
If you can sit through 90 minutes of what feels a lot like a sermon, this is fairly informative - and I think (?) more or less accurate although there's one glaring math error you can't help but see. Sugar: The Bitter Truth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
"You should understand what the code is doing"
In a single round, perhaps not. In a best of 30 rounds on three different maps with asymmetrical teams and a team economy, you can see the elements of what the original comment was talking about, "interesting risk/reward and provoking you opponent to overextending type stuff."

If you haven't seen a Counter-Strike game played competitively, this weekend a "Major" tournament is being played in Katowice[0]. It's well worth watching a match to get a glimpse of the mechanics. It might also be fun.

[0] http://www.esl-one.com/csgo/katowice-2015/
For a number of years, the common belief was that RTS Go = Starcraft Broodwar, especially in Asia.

You can maintain this belief until today if you measure "minimality/essentiality" by size (in MB).

Most probably there are other games out there that are even more minimalistic but for sure they're less popular and less known. You could make a case for DF (although there is no MP) or even C&C1 (just ignore the balance issues).
I found it amusing that an article on this topic has a newsletter signup dialog appear immediately upon scrolling down. I'm sure the effectiveness of such a technique follows the same kind of curve as the other techniques discussed in the article.
A Degree in Music, Painting Is Worth More Than Decades of Practice.
Well, node is node...

In Clojure I got almost to the point where I can write and reuse almost any layer of my application, I need to connect with Mongo, check, I need to authenticate an user, check, I need to connect with Postgresql, check...

In the next app, if I would need to connect again to mongo I will just need to import the relevant module...
Wow. That[1] does not sound comfortable.

(My own use case is opening Amazon packages.)

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/knife-easily-swallowed-smuggled-prison...
Leaving aside the gimmicks in some of these examples, it is a fact that when you need to communicate quantitative information machine generated text is a great solution. Our company builds analytics and dashboards for fund managers and traders (the people who manage most pension funds). Infographics and charts only go so far; eventually, the user has to extract the key information, or communicate it with a colleague, which means verbalizing.

[ShowHN:] We built our report generation system (in Haskell) that can create a custom report for every portfolio or market index, and can be tuned to the user's risk profile. We've released a public version that anyone can use for free that covers most global indices and sectors:

https://apps.otastech.com/morningreport?listtype=marketindex...

In our experience, the turns of phrase that initially give the impression that the text has been written by a human quite quickly become irritating noise. Our users need to absorb information quickly and accurately, and comprehension is aided by adhering to a standard structure and avoiding figurative language.
One of the core tenets of toxicology is actually that everything is toxic; the varying amounts and damage it causes are what being toxic is all about.

Source: I gave a presentation once in middle school. ;)
If I add 3 employers, I am not able to go back and edit the first two after reaching the preview stage.
>Government funding did indeed help to create the foundation of what became the internet, but for years they didn't know what to do with the technology.

That's not really true. They built it for the military and for academia. It flowered in these environments, and in fact most of today's internet infrastructure was built in academia, by academia, for academia.

Commercialization just also wasn't that great. Out of all my most-used websites, only the social-media sites and newspapers are commercial businesses. Everything else I like on the web is basically just someone's organization or hobby, sometimes with some ads to keep it going monetarily (and often not even that, since running a small personal webserver nowadays is so cheap that people can do it for kicks).
The goal is to keep it simple and not support everything and the kitchen sink (like Spring Boot and the Spring ecosystem in general does).
> You should actually assume a woman doesn't want you to comment on her appearance.

I was taught both in dance/etiquette school and by my grandma that I should ALWAYS compliment if a woman looks great.
The short of it is that while the second installment is always a challenge, being forced to face the reality of being a sequel instead of a stand-alone story, the successful sequel usually ends up passing the buck by focusing on buildup and universe expansion. Often the sequel jumps genres or settings.
The third installment is then charged with culmination, building up tension even more before tying it all up in a satisfying manner, without the option of switching it up yet again. If it's in 3D, that means they couldn't figure it out and opted for a second sequel instead.
The fourth installment is, of course, practically impossible, and tends to be a prequel or a spinoff.
> We then stopped instrumenting for other reasons.

Any reasons you want or are allowed to share?
Here's solar back further:

http://io9.com/solar-powers-epic-price-drop-visualized-51044...

What we're meant to be comparing -- and I don't think that chart mean to lump all lng or all oil in together -- is that solar is now comparable to oil and/or lng in certain locations.

Oh, and I don't think anyone anticipates efficiency gains in shale oil extraction comparable to the ongoing efficiency increases in anything silicon related.
Dead still 2014
What's the benefit of avoiding the use of a debugger? (2012)
> There are some things that I would like to see from/in Pixie...

> Some form of package distribution support... could this be piggy-backed on Clojars?

There is Dust :

https://github.com/pixie-lang/dust

which pulls packages from Github.
If the two best things I could say about my city were fast internet and no traffic, I'd kill myself - or move, I guess.
> MAYBE that's because it's too well hidden or maybe those machines I've looked at simply didn't have it.

Maybe you don't know what you're doing.

> I'd say that non-hypothetically speaking, they were trying to stay on Microsoft's good side and coming up with a lame fucking excuse to do so.

I'd say that you don't know what you're talking about.

> Someone on this thread mentioned that chromebooks have a button. When pretty much the lowest-cost point in the market can do it....

Except Google are able to precisely define what a Chromebook looks like - if you don't manufacture to Google's specifications, you don't get to ship ChromeOS. Which, if Google were to dominate the market, would probably be the point where you'd decry them as behaving in anticompetitive ways.

Microsoft have to perform an interesting balancing act. Vendors will adhere to the Windows hardware certification requirements because it saves them money per-unit. Microsoft can demand new firmware features because that's a one-off cost per new platform. Hardware features cost per unit, and if they push that too far it's cheaper for manufacturers to tell Microsoft to fuck off and market their hardware without the Windows sticker. That's simply not an option in the ChromeOS market. You can't compare them.

> Yes they do.

So cool you don't know what you're talking about.

> I wonder how many of those lawyers have ever tried to install linux with secure boot turned on.

Linux distributions having fucking dreadful installers really isn't what determines whether something is an antitrust violation or not. Linux distributions not being able to get their shit together sufficiently to get things signed isn't either. Canonical, Red Hat and Suse (and a whole host of smaller distributions and specialised products) have managed to deal with this.

> That certainly explains the apologetics.

I've also done pretty well out of OpenStack, but I'd be the first to admit that it's dreadful.
We've been using the Sync Beta for a few months now and I can confirm this is the smoothest way to have the client/server teams working together.

We use the collections as both day-to-day development tools, as well as API documentation and a quick test layer.

Kudos to the Postman team!
Direct link to pixie's github https://github.com/pixie-lang/pixie
I'd love to read a writeup comparing and contrasting the two systems.
Paw is great, full-featured and polished - but it doesn't allow collaboration in a team, what Postman Sync is all about.
Even when they were using WebKit, it was never the same version, and they had patches. So there never was a unique WebKit rendering engine.
Your post completely misses the point, but I guess ad hominem attacks are easier than actually using reason.

If you reread what I wrote, you'll discover I'm merely pointing out either a) an uncomfortable implication of a line of reasoning or b) a logical flaw in said line of reasoning or c) an unstated premise. I took no actual position myself.
Have you been to other cities with underground metro lines? The NYC subway is the dirtiest, noisiest, most claustrophobic metro system I've ever used; it even gives London a run for its money.

There are other great cities out there. Many of them do things differently, and do quite well at it. Try Hong Kong or Singapore's underground, or in Europe, Vienna's - even the ones in China are cleaner and easier to navigate.

I agree with nostromo. A day in New York is a day endlessly pushing against roadblocks, those roadblocks being people, traffic, delays, dirt, bad neighborhoods, long commutes, noise, expensive living, expensive eating... and all of that just to live in your tiny box and think that you're a part of it all.

I'll take small to medium-size towns any day, over that.
Yes, the SAFE Network from MaidSafe (http://maidsafe.net) is exactly that. It's a data storage and communications network that provides anonymity. It's resistant to censorship and MITM attacks.

It's not quite ready yet (even though MaidSafe has been working on it since 2006), but it's expected to launch this year. At the moment, we are waiting for the launch of testnet 3, the final test network before the beta launch of the network. More details in the Roadmap: http://maidsafe.net/roadmap.

You can learn more about the SAFE Network by reading the System Docs: http://systemdocs.maidsafe.net.

Feel free to ask any questions you have on the community forum (perhaps in the Beginners category): https://www.maidsafe.org.
Did you try out the Cassandra-backed KairosDB? I'm very interested in the results if you did.
You are right. I had heard of corecursion before but never thought of it in this context. Thanks to your comment I feel like I have finally groked it :)