skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The way I see it is like this:

So-called "programming" jobs can be science, engineering, a trade, or a completely different job masquerading as "programming."

Science is what tends to happen in research divisions and academia. These jobs revolve around the invention of novel algorithms, research into theory, and so on, sometimes without even having a practical application in mind. The work product is often papers, but is also sometimes new languages or proofs of concept.

Software engineering jobs tend to be what you see in "senior developer" positions in industry. They're about applying known concepts (i.e., existing languages, implementations of approaches from the literature, and so on) to build a defined system in sometimes-novel ways. The work output is usually a product or service that you have some degree of responsibility for.

Software as a trade is what most junior programmers and general employees at larger companies do. This is the application of very specific learned skills to implement pre-solved problems (i.e., a ticket to "make X work like Y using Z method"). The final product is closed tickets / implemented features.

And still another large group of "programming" jobs are actually more about knowing the problem than the solution. These are really jobs about using programming to do something else. Process and product optimization as well as a lot of engineering support jobs fall into this category. The work product is an improved process or system that happens to use a computer.

You can learn in any of these jobs. In the science job, you learn the fundamentals and then think of advancements to the field. In the engineering job, you study the fundamentals to apply them to solving a problem. In the trade job, you build the biggest possible toolbox of code to apply to each solution you're given to implement. And in the non-programming job you learn a whole new field and then apply code to it.

All of these jobs can be lucrative, fulfilling, educational, and fun, but you need to know which one you're getting into ahead of time. "Programming" and "industry setting" are awfully vague and useless terms.
Carbon fibre is not recyclable though.
No questions, just a hearty "Congratulations!" and "Good luck!"

I'm excited to see this develop.
Actually this will enable her to get more opportunities.
Can you find any way to order that on their site?

Anyway, you will also note they did not actually send the i7 versions off for testing as the battery life would tank. IMO, there are three basic classes of laptop ultra-portable trade power for awesome battery life and light weight, desktop replacements which are meant to be used on a desk, and gaming machines. You can dump a large SSD into an ultra-portable without issue but dells approach of bumping RAM, CPU, HDD, etc. in lockstep just means their ultra-portables are stuck with tiny disks for little reason.
Twitter reportedly acquires Periscope
See also djb's counterargument: http://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html
> by Hooke

Figures
Looks good, and I like that you're aiming to make it lightweight. However, I'd take another "do we need this" pass to eliminate dependency bulk.

For example, I'd avoid having a (somewhat) verbose plugin dependency to shim `console.log` - it's very easy to avoid hitting that incompatibility in most development. Similar argument against including es5-shim - it's super easy to add that if/when you need it, but it's orthogonal to building a react application.

Also, I'd be wary of incorporating Radium - it will narrow the audience because it brings another set of dev requirements., and it's really not Essential to building a react app, it's just a nice-to-have if it fits your dev style.

Will definitely be interested in trying this out next time I'm playing with React, though - thanks for sharing it!
I'm curious if this machine will be able to drive a 5k monitor when Apple makes one. The tech spec says the USB-C port will support DisplayPort 1.2 (not 1.3), so it doesn't seem promising :(
>Full general purpose OS
>Chrome with adblock and other extensions
>Excel with VBA
>Run virtual machines

If you did your research, I'm pretty sure you would find that you can do all of these things on a macbook.
What skillset do participants have to have to play this game?

Is it purely security stuff?
Why isn’t everything normally distributed?
The mod operator isn't the solution to that problem, but that problem shoves integer division in your face. If a dev sees that and isn't curious enough to understand there is a division operator and a remainder operator, just like when you studied fractions in 3rd grade, I don't know that I want to work with that person.

And every dev should have hit the remainder operator at bare minimum when they had a long running loop and wanted to print a status every kth operation, eg

for(int i=0; i < 100000000; i++){
// some operation
if(i % 100000 == 0)
printf("** operating on count %d\n", i);
}

or when processing a big file, printing every k lines; or when running a slow operation, printing every k seconds; or ...
If it's not immediately apparent to me how to close it I get out dev tools and start slapping "display: none;" on things. If that takes more than 30 seconds I just give up and close the tab...
> We’re not here to fix the technical interview: we’re here to destroy it, and create something new and better in its place.

That sounds pretty bold - some of us are kind of happy to go in and do an interview and talk about our experience and not spend a lot of time playing a game. I could see the game as more likely to work for people with lots of time and not as much experience or proficiency with the typical process. I could see it working very well indeed to find people who might otherwise have been ignored.

In any event, it sounds cool, and I wish you guys the best of luck with it!
Will the CTFs be security focused or more non-traditional, like Stripe's distributed systems CTF?
Glad you like it! Definitely hear you on "Gilded" sounding elitist. We are working on our messaging to convey that anyone can sign up for the service. We don't want to come off pretentious in any way, since we want to empower all email users to fight back against spammers.
I have a YubiKey permanently occupying a USB port in my laptop for 2FA.
Austin, TX - Python/Django developer - https://www.texastribune.org/jobs/platform-developer/
Exciting stuff! It's ambitious but with the talented team behind it I'm confident they can pull it off.

> We come here not to serve technology recruiters, but instead to replace them with a small shell script.
Very nice. I've been planning to do a podcast series about this kind of stuff, but not necessarily limited to Linux.
Sure, the Webtop design had implementation problems, but the concept was solid. I think it's biggest deathblow was that it was released before Android supported large screens, so it was gimped to a version of Linux with only a couple pre-installed apps, rather than the tablet UI Webtop later could provide, after the concept was already killed in future models.

Yeah, the Google that is making Project Ara is a long way away from the Google that embraced open protocols and standards, and open sourced platforms like Android and Chromium.
Enjoy programming in any language.

Be fearlessly willing to pick up programming in new languages.

No security knowledge is required.

Security is a backdrop for what we're doing, but not the only backdrop; it is one of two problem domains we're starting out with.

We use security mostly as a venue for systems programming.
Oh, I'm certainly not blaming the victim. But I believe people have a responsibility to protect themselves. Not just a right, a responsibility. Fool me once, shame on you, etc.

If you are raped and do nothing about it, you're certainly not deserving of being raped again by the same guy. He's still a monster. But when it happens you've been a party to it. And you definitely can't complain that the company or industry you work for is sitting idly by and allowing it if you never reported it to them in the first place.

Now if you did report it and nothing happened, that's a problem. I can't imagine what I'd do if an employee came to me with that, and thankfully I've never had to, but I promise you it wouldn't be nothing.
> Specifically, a naive lisp evaluator is much easier than a C compiler.

That's true, but a naive Lisp evaluator is a) not a compiler, and b) not correct. A naive implementation of Lisp leaks memory very rapidly, and obvious memory management schemes fail. Garbage collection was invented for Lisp to deal with these problems, and even assuming an immature implementation, GC isn't trivial. The simplest implementation of mark-and-sweep garbage collection requires a lot of discipline to make sure that objects are correctly allocated so that in-scope objects are kept live and out-of-scope objects are discoverable as dead. Even if you're writing your own allocator for C, that allocator is pretty trivial in comparison.
I wonder if the authors are fans of Stargate Universe. The show's premise involves a key character being identified by success on a puzzle embedded in a video game.
There are two senses of the term "mutual" being conflated here.

Grandparent is correct that as a term of art, a "mutual" NDA is one that puts non-disclosure obligations onto both parties.

Parent is perhaps usefully pointing out that the agreement is likely not "mutual," meaning entirely symmetric and evenly weighted between the parties. A fair argument, but confusing to folks who are working out NDA terminology 101.

Still, though, you'd call it a "mutual" NDA to distinguish it from a one-way NDA.
Apple Watch in stores on April 24, high-end version costs $10,000
This guy aggregates a bunch of great stuff and sends a weekly e-mail. I think it's at least worth checking out: http://dataelixir.com/
Awesome, I've been waiting for something like this

That being said, I've got a couple questions

Will all the CTFs be security focused?

One of the most common problems coursera ran into was people copying the assignments of other people. How do you intend to prevent copying for the CTFs? I see that you mentioned you're not going to DMCA tutorials or Let's Plays and instead track their every iteration on the code. I guess you can get rid of outright copying that way but I'd love to hear your other strategies.

Other than that this seems like a really interesting way to do recruiting. I can't wait to see the actual CTFs.

Also you've got a tiny typo in the WHY IS STARFIGHTER THE RIGHT TEAM FOR THIS? section:
"I have a folder in Gmail saving messages from geeks who used by career advice or salary negotiation tips to their advantage."
I think the by should be my
Amazing I remember the "tune" that the modem makes from back in the day but never realized how much stuff was going on. I never knew a custom connection was being made each time, but I guess that makes sense as not all phone connections are equal. Has anyone tried to use a dial up model recently? Do the telephone lines still support it, or has anything changed on the exchanges that would stop a modem working?
> Interesting the MacBook is lighter than the MacBook Air.

They missed such a great opportunity to call it the MacBook Helium.
It's not price tag alone that makes them vulnerable, it's price tag to value ratio. I would gladly take out $200K in loans for an education that would guarantee a $300K+ salary out of school.

Current statistics on average salaries for those schools in EECS disciplines compared to industry average seems to suggest that the expense is plenty justified. Will this offering be able to compete at all in the value delivered dimension? It seems like comparing apples and oranges.
How about this as a solution to the 1-port problem: Integrate the USB-C hub into the brick of the power charger.

Then when you are charging, you can plug your USB or display devices into the power brick, and you don't have any extra hubs to carry around.
From http://www.apple.com/uk/macbook/specs/

Supported scaled resolutions:
- 1440x900
- 1280x800
- 1024x640

I think the screen will probably be ok.
Because you can't really tell how well software is working when looking at the device edge-on, and that's apparently the way Apple looks at them most of the time.

I mean this more metaphorically than literally, but I'm so tired of complaints about the ridiculously primitive Finder being met with, "the edge of the iMac now appears even thinner, now that we've repositioned formerly convenient connectors and such into a bulge behind the screen. Surely you agree that the appearance of a thin edge is more important than usability of Finder or connectors."

Or a yearning for more battery life, or even just a swappable battery? "The bottom of our laptop looks better than the top of theirs!" Or, why is the text on my iPhone suddenly so low contrast and hard to read? "Surely you agree that having a fresh look matters more than readability! Look, the icons are flat. Don't you realize how critically important that is?"

Or, the apps get worse, not better, over time, and you always have to ask yourself whether each free OS upgrade is worth the risk of unreliable WiFi. Can't you work on this, Apple? "Thinner!"

Apple used to emphasize software quality and usability. Now, it's all about the style, about how the edges look in fashion magazines. And yet the rest of the industry is so fragmented that they don't do any better in terms of usability. The frustration is that unlike them, Apple could do so much better, but ever since the candy-colored iMacs, they've decided that Fernando (Billy Crystal's old SNL character) was right. When it comes to look and feel, "It's better to look good than to feel good!"
If the only reason you'd mess around with Starfighter is to get a job, we've done something wrong. This isn't one of those sites where you solve discrete programming puzzles for badges, or in lieu of a whiteboard interview.
The most fascinating part is the Russian angle for both of these hacks. Hacking media is hacking democracy. It's intriguing to see a deeply undemocratic regimes trying to do that in the US.
NSA head wants authority to respond to unattributed nation-state cyberattacks
This is actually an improvement, in that before this legislation it was free to bottle your own water in BC. This price isn't nearly high enough, but it's better[] than before.

The last estimate I saw was that Nestle was going to pay about $550/yr to bottle and sell our water back to us.
If you look for "C#", you don't get C# jobs. Typical keyword bug in job sites.
To me the biggest case is going places where I might have an unexpected peripheral need. For instance, it's not uncommon for someone to need to transfer me some files with a flash drive.

If I were to buy this thing, I'd have to carry a USB Type-A dongle all the time, just in case. Rather than have say... an extra millimeter of thickness, and the USB port just built right in.
This is a very good point.

I'll also add to this what might still be the biggest burden of Macos: its file-system. It's amazing that they can get away still providing this horror in 2015!
We're aware of Getable. We see them as more of a middleman between contractors and rental companies, whereas we focus on helping contractors lend out idle equipment.
I am well aware of this, although I think it's a poor choice. But it's the juxtaposition wiht the word 'execute' that is problematic. If it was a secure place to 'run' unverified code I would not have an issue with it.
A phone uses about 5W, a laptop 50W and a ultra-high-end desktop 500W. That's two orders of magnitude of difference, no way the CPU can be the same for all that.
Ask HN: HN meetup at SXSWi?
Who'll be in town for SXSWi?

Anyone have any talks they're giving/excited about?
Thanks, that's a good tip.
It's amazing that modem speeds reached 56Kb/s over analog lines that were digitized at 64Kb/s. Especially since T1 carrier systems stole one low-order bit in every other sample for control purposes. That's an incredible accomplishment of signal processing. As late as the mid-1970s, it was believed to be theoretically impossible. Bell Labs once did a study that concluded that 19Kb/s was the upper limit for analog phone lines.

It's also impressive that the modem negotiation process worked as well as it did, across many vendors and generations of modems.

When the modems agree on a good high-speed mode, the data sounds like white noise. That's proper. Any modulation scheme which doesn't sound like white noise is wasting bandwidth. Carriers and tones waste energy but carry no payload data.

This, incidentally, is a critique of SETI. For a long time, the SETI crowd was looking for "carriers", signals with a big fixed-frequency component. Carriers are obsolete. Other than legacy analog broadcast stations, almost nothing with high power today transmits a strong carrier signal. So SETI was looking for civilizations that used high power analog radio.
Why being tech savvy is no longer optional for employees
Disclaimer: I have only skim read the article, so this is for my laziness and the benefit of all

Apart from the gameplay mechanism with code challenges, how is this better / different to HackerRank for a) "programmers" b) companies?
I’m curious as to how much this will select for people with free time. Many of the CTFs I’ve played in required a quite non-trivial amount of investment of time (which I didn’t mind, as they’ve been quite enjoyable), but there are certainly people who can’t afford n dozen hours to solve problems due to family/work/other obligations.

I do think this is significantly better than the alternative, but I’m also concerned that it will just create a new class of people who do unfairly poorly in the hiring process.
Come on -- you're on of the commenters I make a point to read on HN. You can't possibly have missed that a huge chunk of valley interviews are, exactly, a fucking smart person pissing contest.

A previous employer loved them some graph problems for interviews. I got in an argument with one of the senior engineers, and demanded I be shown where in our codebase we used graph algorithms. The answer: nowhere. But you had to know your way around them to get hired there.

Now when I interview, I refuse to study them. I think this serves me well in helping me avoid jobs I wouldn't enjoy anyway.

An interviewer once essentially demanded I invent morris traversal on the whiteboard in front of him. I'm not sure how that related to my ability to be an ml engineer.
We could have shitphones.

Or, you know, do what Google did with the Moto G: unspectacular but very usable hardware, no crufty software layer above the OS, at a good price point.
Selection bias will now be those who have Apple products.
I'm curious about the tech behind these new reactors, such as the specific design and the reactants involved. Specifically it would be great if we could obviate any energy-related excuse to produce reactants that could double as the fuel for nuclear weapons.
Make sure the NDA is symmetrical.

Make sure you know where the other guy lives.

Make sure the other guy doesn't have a history of barratry.
Is it targeted to devs looking for full-time work only or will it make sense for freelancers as well?
tl;dr because waking up in the middle of the night to debug someone else's app really, really sucks.
Show HN: Genex – Regex Expansion package for Golang
I presume it is based on the film "The Last Starfighter" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/ - in which a teen perfects an arcade game, and is then selected as a pilot for the actual spacecraft.
>She is either a genius or squandering opportunity.

what a ridiculous meme. I guess if it works out we should praise her and if it doesn't we should lambast her. you know, for being a genius or squandering opportunity, respectively.
I feel like it's a combination of that and scarcity in a few, narrow fields (iOS/app dev, etc) but not a paucity of STEM people in general.
From Thiel Fellowship to Quora??

If you've never heard the phrase "from charybde to scylla", now is the time to look it up.
I'm a forty-something lady who is almost but not quite on the edge of replacing her 2013 Air with this.

My current machine has two USB ports, power, Mini Displayport, audio, and an SD card. I do not think I have ever plugged an SD card into this computer. I think I may have plugged one into one of my computers once. I was happy to ditch a DVD drive a few years ago when I bought my first Air; I think I used one of those maybe twice in five years. I've never felt the lack of Ethernet or Firewire.

I used to say that I'd never want a laptop smaller than a 15", but the higher DPI of the Airs changed my tune. I love my 13" now. Would a Retina 12" screen work for me? I dunno. It might, it might not.

When I'm on the road, the most things I've ever had to plug in to my computer are three: my Wacom tablet, a power brick, and a video adapter. That last only happens when I'm giving a presentation at a con; most of the time I just go out to a cafe with the drawing tablet and no other accessories.

And yes, there are adaptors to plug video/power/USB into that single USB-C connector at the same time.

The Air makes you angry, and this is an expression of the same ideas that drove the Air: small, light, and minimalist. It's no surprise you dislike this one too.
This has piqued my interest more than any other similar challenge/game I've seen in the past.

What's the second problem domain you're starting out with?

I hope it's to do with graphics/parallelized matrix math sort of stuff.
All connections arc as they come apart, it's just that the arc size is a function of the dielectric medium (air?), potential difference (voltage) and current. You design for "number of disconnects" and choose materials and power design so that the connector will survive as long as specified.

Apple MagSafe connectors are on the same voltage (20V) as these new Type C connectors, although Type C seems rated for a higher current (5A).

Looking at the pinout, the GND and VBUS are a bit longer, so will disconnect last upon removal. This may be to allow for the voltage to be dropped in anticipation of a disconnect, but you'd need enough intelligence at the power supply end to notice that. Lowering the voltage prior to disconnect would reduce the arc size.
I'm super excited about it even though I'm happy where I am. I've been doing devops for a while now and I can feel my other dev skills slowly atrophying. This will be (hopefully) a great way to help keep those skills as current as possible.
A smart, meticulous, better than other people person like myself can't get past the hubris, sorry.
Good point. Something I'll keep in mind as we go forward. I got so far through microcorruption and ran out of time. Thanks.
Why is it unfair to hire people who spend large fractions of their free time honing their skill over those who don't? I mean, if it shows in the quality of their work...

Edit: I know this comment is unpopular, but every craft industry does work like this to some extent. As a programmer you have a portfolio, and all else being equal those who spend their free time coding have larger and more impressive portfolios. That's the career advice you always give someone on getting their feet into the industry: code more on your own.
Show HN: InboxTunes. Sends one song per day to your inbox
One that fits in my pocket and lets me touch the screen to do things?

Check out this Dell 8 inch tablet that does all of these things - http://www.amazon.com/Dell-Venue-Series-Windows-Tablet/dp/B0...
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/benchmarks/two-in-one...
Maybe it's just not set up correctly, but my company has airplay in every conference room and we very rarely use it because its so fickle whether or not it'll acknowledge your MacBook. Maybe Yosemite fixed these problems but that's just trading one set of bugs/problems for another.
See http://www.microcorruption.com.
We'll send a reading list out to the subscriber list, sometime soon. It'll be pretty obvious from that.
> The test should work on Linux or Mac OS X, on x86 only.

No x86_64 support?