skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Very nice write-up, I can just feel the stress.

Regarding the interview, there's this trick I learned that presenters do when they come on the stage. Instead of focusing on the audience and their talk immediately, they first drink a glass of water slowly. It lets you set your own pace, and deal with the first high of adrenaline a little.

In this case, they asked you a question and you immediately fired up a repl and started typing away as if it's a race. But if no one is holding a stop watch it's not really a race. If you're going to have to do this kind of interview more often, perhaps practice on your generic problem solving strategy.

If it were me, I'd probably ask for a piece of paper, and then write down the components of problem on the highest level, then drill down the details of each component. At each level of detail check with the interviewer if the requirements of the component match their intentions. When you're confident you've got the algorithm down on paper, then you can start on working it out in the REPL.

Also, I'm not a LISPy guy so no idea how you usually do this, but those first three mistakes you made were horrible. Obviously you were nervous, but these kinds of mistakes don't happen if you have a good IDE and disciplined code style. You can't miss matching brackets if every opening bracket starts a new line and a new indentation level. You can always clean up the new lines when your algorithm is done.

Practice and preparation are the best countermeasure to stress.

Not that I agree with this interview style at all by the way. You are most likely an excellent developer, and if they don't decide on hiring you they probably are making a big mistake. If I was hiring Clojure people I'd be surprised I'd get someone that would work a REPL like that without internet reference at all.
I thought when arrested and charged with a crime.

IANAL obviously.
Deep learning is great and useful and a big step forward, but it's still basically just brute-forced pattern matching. Wonderful for some kinds of data analysis but, without additional architectural breakthroughs, useless for developing the kinds of AI everyone dreams about -- systems that can take creative action in a world (whether the real world or some virtually constructed one) and evaluate the effects and utility (for some interesting utility function) of said actions.
This questions often pops up whenever there's a thread about someone passing away on the front page. I think it's problematic since it will be up to the admins to decide whether a person was "important" enough to have a black bar. A very hard task where each consideration will be controversial. Therefore I don't think they should do it all.
Curious: what was Javascript used for? (In terms of general usage contexts.)
> What if he's a fresh college grad or a junior developer?

Even when I was in college, I didn't write crap. Obviously my code wasn't great, but it wasn't crap.

And there is a lot of crap out there, I see it every day. Based on the OP's description, we're talking about someone who isn't capable of producing quality work.

You can either write code or you can't and it is very obvious by seeing the code.

If the person can write code, but needs a few pointers, that's what code reviews are for. If they can't write code, they need to move on to a different profession ... or move up to management.
Hopefully the cause of that will be investigated thoroughly.
Same here. I've had two of these and they are just so enjoyable, not to mention the incredibly positive feedback.
Actually CS comprises of around 15% of undergrads and commands a dominating influence over the rest of the school. http://stanfordvisualized.soraven.com/
Yeah, having looked at some of the potential outcomes of false positives, I have no interest in whole-body scans. One day they'll be a great idea, but for now, I'm skipping them.

As one example of many, consider prostate cancer screening: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/811846
> Interviews are weird: the pressure of time, and not being able to look things up, distorts the code.

In the interviews I do, I tell the candidate that:

1. There is no time pressure. Work at a normal pace, as if you were working here. This is not a speed test. I don't expect you to finish. I mainly want to know how you think.

2. You should look things up. Behave the same way you would when coding at home. Use Google, Stack Overflow, documentation, etc.

This probably works better for the interviews I give because the problem is not implementing an existing algorithm. It's a realistic task, something that we've actually built on-the-job.
I find the % operator (div and mod) essential - and not only in interview questions.

As far as this interview question is "Do you %?", I like it as a test. For the rest, I feel sorry for the author. Good luck next time :)
The Language Instinct sets up a straw man and then dispels that.
It's a shame the headline stopped where it did. The article continues, "... or stop at the human-ability station." This makes for a much more interesting discussion (only because we're human).

We all measure AI progress and its rate of progress differently. That's the common debate, isn't it? But however we arrive at that axis, human ability is a point on it. It will be a point in time. And there's no reason to believe it's a special point that machine intelligence would notice or throttle itself at. So as progress goes rushing, indifferently, past... don't things get interesting?
Ask HN: What's your favorite mouse
As a heavy workstation user I have typically gone with gamer mice like the Logitech g9 or g500 and now my g500 is failing. I've started looking around and see a lot of mice are hardcore gamer which now come with a lot more functions than needed. I've always been partial to gamer mice for their durability, ergonomics and construction. Being curious, I started thinking about what hardcore workers actually prefer for mice. Would love to hear.
Yes, I had tried that earlier. Also tried upgrading to a later version, but not enough bios.

And it is running 32 bit windows on a 64 bit board.
I even do this IRL. If I come to visit you or you come to visit me then that takes precedence over social media. If that's not the case I'll be more than happy to walk.

It's rude beyond insult to do this during a job interview, whoever decided that was ok to do is basically sending you a very large warning message that even hiring is a job that does not require full attention.
I feel compelled to point out, as a native English speaker familiar with this sort of mathematics, that the phrasing to "go infinitely" doesn't make much sense. Or, if it makes sense, it is at least ambiguous (with plenty of room for the interpretation "diverges to infinity"). The clarification that the author makes about looping (or even better, repeating) is much clearer.
> If it was because they were following advice they read
> somewhere because worried it would influence their offer,
> I'd try to dispel that myth within the context of
> Automattic.

If knowledge of a candidate's previous salary doesn't influence your offer, why do you ask for it and what do you do with it?
Err, what the blog entry describes is just as disruptive to the deb/rpm setup as what nix is doing.

Heck, i think with some clever symlinking you could in theory dump a rpm into its own (optionally versioned) subdir and still have it working in the grand scheme of things.

The biggest stumbling block for current package management is that of versioned libs. Usually they work around this by putting different package names on different major lib versions.
Just a backup script for Linux - bummed it together with some googling:

Designed for overnight backup, hook up a backup drive in the afternoon one day, and put in safe the next morning.

Script mounts and verifies existence of a backup external hdd; creates a backup tar on the drive; deletes all but the last five recent backup archives; then unmounts drive for removal next morning.
And they just as much has to do that to adopt the PoetteringOS as they have going Nix.
>The #TalkPay discussion has been quite good in bringing people back down to earth. Developers that I admire and are clearly better than me are earning not much more than I do and much less than the figure you have quoted.

Out of curiosity, since I was out of the loop about the whole #talkpay thing, which developers do you have in mind with that statement?
You're liable to see Collatz sequences and such in interviews because the interviewers can look up the answers to project Euler problems online to see how your solution compares to those coded up by others.
That is not remotely the whole argument. The argument is really about the fact that competition ultimately drives profit margin to zero. See his other writings for details.
Damn, I didn't know what the word meant. Now I do and can't use this.
This is a tricky problem. Here are some things I've found helpful on the other side of the table:

- Pick a real world task (e.g. text munging).

- Suggest in advance that they bring a laptop with their preferred work environment. Allow any reasonable language if you're willing to train them on your stack.

- Write the problem down ahead of time. Have someone else at your company read it.

- Do the problem yourself. Ballpark your estimate for a great candidate at 3x the time it took you.

- Tell them there is no penalty for using stack overflow over the language docs.

- After you give them the problem, give them a few minutes in peace (leave the room) while they think it over. Talk about their approach out loud before they begin working.

- Ask them to spend 5-10 minutes re-factoring their code once it's working.
One has a choice on whether to use Apple or not. In the US, at least, one rarely has choice in their ISP, especially if they want something with any kind of speed. Hence, them trying to exert an iron grip over what people are allowed to access is far more damning.
Tyranny by majority is important, but I wonder if quadratic voting would address another important issue: if enough people are participating, then the cost of voting (research + going to polling station) outweighs the benefit (changing the outcome). The cost of voting is roughly fixed, while the benefit decreases rapidly as the number of participants grows.

Maybe if quadratic voting was used, then only people that truly care about an issue would vote, giving the individuals that do care enough influence to make voting worthwhile.
Who decides what topics the voters get to spend their points on?

How could voters choose between candidates with such a structure?
tl;dr:

I'm new to Seaborn and matplotlib in general, but Seaborn is a wrapper on top of matplotlib, and from what I can tell, was borne partly out of frustration with how hard it is to get matplotlib graphics to look decent out-of-the-box. Which makes it, in one sense, kind of like what ggplot2 was to R's standard plotting tools.

However, Seaborn has a more object-oriented API, among other things:

http://stanford.edu/~mwaskom/software/seaborn/introduction.h...

> Seaborn’s goals are similar to those of R’s ggplot, but it takes a different approach with an imperative and object-oriented style that tries to make it straightforward to construct sophisticated plots. If matplotlib “tries to make easy things easy and hard things possible”, seaborn aims to make a well-defined set of hard things easy too.

There already is an attempt to port ggplot over to Python, and its authors' opinion is that its API should look like R's ggplot2, which means the syntax is not Pythonic: http://ggplot.yhathq.com/
Gobolinux (and NixOS) don't go as far as what is suggested here.

On Gobolinux each version of a program or lib is given its own versioned subdir in /Programs, but that's as far as it goes.

What Poettering is pushing is for full containerization, where each "app" has its own tailored environment.
After programming for a long time everything starts to look like a computer but everything is not a computer.
Agreed, but what I mean is it can't happen.
I really love this methodology. If an exceptional case exists, and it's cheap to cause the exceptional case to occur during standard usage, then do it so that the code is well-exercised.
https://www.uservoice.com
On my first job interview, despite having already quite a bit of experience with personal and free software projects in various languages and frameworks, I somehow managed to struggle with FizzBuzz. I didn't know that it's supposed to work as a basic filter so I was looking for some catch thinking that it cannot be as easy as it looks. As I couldn't find any I figured out I should go with trying to write the prettiest, most elegant and clever way, started fiddling with modulo division and managed to screw it up under nerves and the fact that I was writing it on paper with no ability to run and check. Also, despite of being told "use whatever language you want", for some irrational reason I worried about correct syntax, which probably added up to my nervousness.

Fortunately, they didn't stop there and I was able to do harder tasks better later on ;)

I reacted pretty much in the same way on my driving exam. Both that interview and that exam weren't telling you anything about how I actually program or how I actually drive - even under extreme conditions. Being judged is just a completely different experience that makes me behave in completely different way.
In the Dart Conference talk, they mention that sky apps (DART apps on Android) are given access to ever permission the system gives them.
These system given permissions will almost definitely work in the Play-store way (as opposed to asking whenever it is required, a la website style).
Perhaps it time someone built a web site where the opinions, comments, and especially actions/votes, of every politician running for office, from City Council on up, were tracked.

Scoring the politicians based on their support for the constitution and especially human rights, plus encouraging the vote, could fix this after just an election cycle or two.
"I’m suddenly self-conscious about the prettiness of my code — it doesn’t matter if I can solve the problem, since I’m also competing against candidates who can solve the problem, so the real competition is probably about how elegant and idiomatic our code is."

This is an incorrect assumption, at least when I interview people. A live coding interview has (almost) nothing to do with the "quality" of your code, and doesn't necessarily even demand complete correctness. It's about observing your process, and trying to simulate what it would be like to work with you:

Do you approach a problem with caution until you're sure you understand it, or jump in head first and start writing code you hope is correct? Can you verbalize your thought process and communicate it to others? How good are you at reasoning about the runtime behavior and correctness of your solution? Do you consider edge cases and naturally want to test them? Things like that are won't show up in a take-home coding test, and tell me a huge amount about what kind of programmer you are, and whether I want to hire you.

See: http://www.yacoset.com/Home/signs-that-you-re-a-bad-programm... - there's a lot of truth to this article, and many of these flaws will be glaringly obvious in a live coding session.

And yes, of course some people interview poorly or are just having a bad day. That's unfortunate, but I'm not about to give up a powerful interview tool just because it can have false negatives. Until I find a divining rod that will point out the best programmer in a room, asking a candidate to write some code is the fastest way to learn what kind of programmer they actually are. (And also immediately weed out people who can't actually write real code.)
I guess it's just two bad apples then.
Of these, d'Alosio seems the closest to an example of what Church is talking about, and it's noteworthy in being noteworthy; an exception to prove the rule.

I concede the point though, is what I should say.
As I read it, the key part is part 2 of the order, in particular page 4, line 28 to page 5 line 1:

"... providers of computer and network resources through which video transits [shall be required to suspend all services with respect to Defendants' Infringing Websites]."

Not even the Court's clarification saves this from being an Order that would bind every network operator connected to the Internet who was served notice [0]; an operator not explicitly listed in the TRO could get the Defendants back online by providing name service and hosting. Then, any "provider of computer and network resources through which video transits"[1] would then be (according to the TRO) obligated to ensure that the Defendants' audio and video signals were not transmitted through the provider's network between 2015-05-02 20:45-400 and 2015-05-03 06:00-400.

Does that make sense?

[0] Notice that the TRO permits notice service by email. AIUI, Plaintiffs could contract with their favorite mass emailing service to send notice to every major and minor network provider, worldwide.

[1] An operator of almost any IP network on the planet obviously fits in this category.
"I do have a moral problem with people who sell vulnerabilities to (a) the USG or (b) people who exploit them."

Just for the sake of pedantry, category (a) is definitely contained in category (b). Just because it's not usually for money, doesn't mean it's not an exploit.
I was curious about this. I guess the protesters were blocking traffic? Maybe the people following in the back didn't realize what the people in the front had done in terms of blocking off the street. The followers then were among the arrested.
Likely they see themselves as having done so, as they pretty as the run of the place over at Fedora...
Hey, kudos from one POS builder to another.

BTW I can't access your live demo site. It says the device has not been set up yet.
The issue is either False positive followed by heavyweight, risky and invasive checks or the non-committal of many radiology reports "further evaluation recommended..."

Basically, radiologists are more afraid of being sued for missing something then they are of being sued for being too cautious. Evasive language is a defence against the latter.

This is a uniquely American condition BTW. Most other places, the liability rules are different and doctors aren't as afraid of lawsuits / insurance premium hikes.
Hi Glen, I mentioned this in another comment, but copying here because I'd like to hear your thoughts on it:

> If enough people are participating in a vote, then the cost of voting (e.g., research + going to polling station) outweighs the benefit (possibility of changing the outcome). The cost of voting is roughly fixed, while the benefit decreases rapidly as the number of participants grows.

Does quadratic voting address this, or are there other ideas you've heard of that address that problem?
To reiterate kybernetikos's point:

if Crossroads can get more than 7,550 votes today for their $57M, they can get more than 7,550 votes tomorrow for the same $57M without skipping a beat, by pre-bribing the electorate to make 1 vote each.

So this doesn't seem to change much from Crossroads' point of view.
This type of work-intensive interview gets old real fast when the umpteenth company declines. I fully understand the pros of looking at a more comprehensive, realistic body of work. But if that's what you're looking for; I got a whole Github profile full of stuff to discuss. Spending every weekend on yet another throwaway application until you get hired; I'd rather not.

EDIT: removed some bitterness. :)
Yes, theoretically any action, no matter how small and remote, can eventually lead to harm of a human, i.e. the butterfly effect, but that's not what I meant.

What I meant was that a machine capable of building a paper clip factory on its own would certainly as well be capable of avoiding doing obviously bad stuff like killing people to turn them into paper clips or melt down buildings and bridges for the iron.

Such a machine would probably also be smart enough to read the law, to have a framework of what it can do and what it can't do.
This is a sentiment I hear expressed a lot:

> But I wanted to appear smart, so I didn’t express any confusion.

And I don't get it. When I ask questions, if anything, I get told that I seem smarter for it. Asking questions is a sign that you're paying attention and actively trying to understand things. I don't think I've ever had anyone question my intelligence for asking questions for clarification.

(I'm not trying to criticize the OP in particular for this. I've heard it from a lot of places, and wanted to point out the fallacy.)
I would say that not requiring politeness grammar is a major strength of English.

Same goes for not requiring articles being a strength of the Japanese language and many other [mostly non European] languages.

I'm less persuaded that tense isn't usually a useful distinction, but the irregularity of tense is a weakness of English (as is its vestigial subjunctive that most speakers barely ever use)
I think the OP made the mistake of trying to solve the problem directly, and when he got errors, he got nervous which made him get more errors. Instead the right strategy would be to think aloud "well, how do I get the digits of a number? first, cast the number into a string then try to see if I can treat it as a list. Ok, let's try (seq (str 10)) on the repl....". Having an instant feedback and being able to no exactly if a small instruction works or not would have helped him to focus better, and avoid nervousness.
Because those fights are fought under different rules and with different styles because of the gloves. Many bare knuckle fights that'd last hours were because they lasted until either someone was dead or unconscious or quit, the notion of a ref stopping the fight once someone got a harsh cut didn't exist. Beyond that, because of the risk of punching e.g. the jaw without gloves (it'll break your hand fairly quickly) punches were directed more at the body, hence the boxing stance where the hands weren't close to the head as much to protect it as it wasn't necessarily the prime target in the bulk of the match.

Of course it'll last longer, doesn't mean it'd last longer under similar rules and fighting styles as boxing is today.

My point is that 15 rounds of the type of punch volume to the head simply wouldn't occur without gloves. It might still be a long fight, but you won't get anywhere near the same type of volume to the head. Hell back in the day there was grappling, kicks and arm locks back in the day. Similar perhaps to MMA, punching the face wasn't nearly as big a thing as it is in boxing today, and a big part of that is because of modern rules as well as boxing gloves.

And again as I mentioned earlier, it's not the broken hands that count. (they can cause permanent damage, yes). It's the permanent brain damage that is the biggest concern, and that risk has increased much more now that gloves make it possible to throw hundreds of punches to the jaw and not injure your hands.

If you're trying to argue that I said that gloves extend fights longer than they did under bare-knuckle rules, you're right, that's not true and that wasn't my point. What I meant to say is that they extend the fights in which fighters mostly punch to the face much longer than they normally could, and radically increase the volume of punches to the face (without reducing the impact to the brain, instead, increasing it, as the weight of the gloves increases the impact).

Although I think it's probably possible to contest the following quote, it's not far from the truth and illustrates the differences a bit:

> As the bare-knuckle campaigner Dr Alan J Ryan pointed out: "In 100 years of bare-knuckle fighting in the United States, which terminated around 1897 with a John L Sullivan heavyweight championship fight, there wasn't a single ring fatality." Today, there are three or four every year in the US, and around 15 per cent of professional fighters suffer some form of permanent brain damage during their career.