skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I'm still amazed by how many "experienced" programmers can't do this.

... can't do this in your incredibly artificial, unrealistic context.

I hate live coding in an interview, especially on paper or whiteboard. I know you say you don't care about syntax and little stuff, but that's not what happens in my brain. I suddenly forget the most basic things. "Wait, do I use semicolons at the end of lines in Ruby? Aaaah, I've been using Ruby for 5 years. How can I not know this. I'm going to bomb this interview. I should just leave now."

I know it sounds ridiculous to you, but something very similar actually happened to me. Give me a block of time and a sample problem to work on at a computer, fine. Ask me to refactor code that already exists, whatevs. I'll happily write and discuss code. Just don't give me that blank piece of paper. My brain goes crazy.

And the funny part is that I've been told one of my best qualities as a developer is my calm, thoughtful performance under pressure. When somebody accidentally drops that table in production or both load balancers go down, I'm your guy. I'll get it fixed quickly, without a lot of panic and fussing about. Just don't give me that piece of paper in an interview.

I can't explain it, but it's true, for me. Maybe it's just that I deal with real crises often enough to have developed a mental muscle for it, but I interview so rarely that I don't have the patterns yet. Either way, I think you're missing out on great candidates with this approach.
Switching on happy memories 'perks up' stressed mice
A denial worthy of a top flight attorney. He implied that by this paragraph:

"You're a mortal lock on raising a round subsequent to Demo Day at a valuation which will make angels weep while happily investing. You have preferential access to every connection which matters in Silicon Valley, including top-tier VC firms, a pool of interested employees, potential acquirers, and vendors who you need good relations with. Comes with one free TechCrunch article, too!"

So we have:

"mortal lock"

"make angels weep"

"preferential access to every connection which matters"

"top tier VC firms"

"one free TC article".
https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses

>Video game or virtual world credits: Sale of in-game currency unless the merchant is the operator of the virtual world

I am.

>Virtual currency or stored value: Virtual currency that can be monetized, resold, or converted to physical or digital products and services or otherwise exit the virtual world (e.g., Bitcoin); sale of stored value or credits maintained, accepted and issued by anyone other than the seller

It can't and isn't.

Their TOS actually makes no mention of virtual currency whatsoever.
Container is a chroot jail on steroids. VM is a QEMU process (also in a container).
This tool was huge in helping me make a good financial decision when I was thinking about housing recently. Hopefully some people at the upshot are reading this, but I'd love the ability to save searches, and also see all the data in an excel like pivot table of some sort to see how the different variables all play together.
You mean a $20k down payment, right? Most of us aren't buying million dollar homes...
Everyone and their dog is trying to hire me.

Good. Go work for them.

My "prima donna" filter is working nicely.
You find it harder to read because you're not used to it, that's all. Once you absorb the syntax it'll feel more native, and you'll format it in a fashion that makes it easier for you to absorb at a glance.
I might put one together, but I shouldn't need to. Yubico should have a docs for common use cases like this. Great product but terrible web site and terrible "enterprise" UIs.
I got excited when I saw the cover of Thinking Fast and Slow. But he failed to mention what I found to be one of the most insightful parts of that book: interviewing.

He kinda touched on it at the end with #1: "Know what you're looking for".

Kahneman is more explicit in Thinking Fast and Slow: come up with a simple rubric of 5 or 6 traits you're looking for in your new hire and ask questions that allow you to score each candidate on a scale of 1 to 5 for each. When you're done, choose the candidate with the highest score.

Maybe the technical ability score gets double-weighted for developers. But it seems like a lot of the interview process (and discussion of it) fixates on this. Well this and, of course, vague impressions of the candidate's personality. In my experience, this misses other key things that make up a competent programmer and worthwhile employee.

In the spirit of Thinking Fast and Slow, here's a question. As an interviewer, what are the 5 most important traits or qualities you look for in a candidate?
Method of Exercising a Cat (Patent System Is Hilariously Broken)
I agree. Sorry, that was unintended. Fixed now. Thanks for the heads up.
>Good programmers really enjoy talking about the details of the technology and how they solved challenging problems. You'll be able to see them geek out a little bit and see that they really enjoyed getting to do it.

I've had this at several companies. I think I've always gotten past this litmus test in one of the interviews, be it on the phone, via Skype, or in person. The problem, for me personally, is the inevitable followup interview consisting of "go to the board and scribble out a function that does X", and then of course "after you're done, I'll add important details and I expect you to be able to modify the function to accommodate as if you were using a text editor".

I admit it, I fail at the "get in front of the board" problems. I'm downright terrible at them. I have no problem with the conversational interviews. I'm not bad at presenting tech to my peers at meetings and book clubs, but in an interview environment I'll freeze up and, at best, come up with a very inefficient implementation. I hate it and it has probably cost me opportunities at places where the rest of the interview felt like it went great.

Yes I know what the Big O is, I know what the Big O of the optimal implementation would be. I can talk all about hashes, final, static, or whatever you think you'll trip me up on. But when I'm up there writing code, every little mistake psyches me out more and more, especially I can't just hit "backspace" to fix it.

At my previous job, after the phone interview they sent me a programming project to implement in a day or two. After submitting it, they had me go to an interview and talk about the solution with a group of engineers, followed by a short conversational interview. That project was my first time writing ruby and I got the position and have great recommendations since leaving the place.

Makes me wish that recommendations held more sway, or that more companies would do more of this "here's a task, send us the solution when you're done with it" type of thing. Dishonest candidates would easily be exposed when they're forced to discuss the solution in depth.

Of course, upon walking out of the building, all the answers magically pop into my head...
What is the reasoning behind this prisoner takedown?

[...] after an inmate in New Mexico was sentenced to 90 days in solitary confinement because his family posted updates and photos to his Facebook account on his behalf. [1]

What? Why? What business does the state have in that? And the state messing with your private property in this way without a court order seems plain illegal to me.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/facebook-reforms-inmat...
Dear Linux, Please Go Back to School
The point I'm trying to make is that you can develop and debug Go code perfectly fine without a debugger, as shown by the large-scale deployments of software written in Go. Not adding Go to your tech stack because of that is... not very well thought through, to say the least.
This happened 12 years ago when the FBI tried to eavesdrop on conversations taking place in a car with OnStar or a similar device. Agents wanted to remotely activate the car's microphone; I wrote about the case here: http://news.cnet.com/Court-to-FBI-No-spying-on-in-car-comput...

The 9th Circuit said "no," but the court's reasoning wasn't based on privacy concerns. The reasoning was that companies can only be forced to comply with wiretaps when the order would cause a "minimum of interference" (and the FBI's tap would have disabled the call-an-operator feature if there were an emergency, which exceeded the "minimum of interference" threshold).

This is not unique to Google, which has done a better job than just about any company I can think of at fighting off overly broad surveillance demands; see my post from two years ago for examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5725899

Why could Apple, Microsoft, or Samsung not be compelled -- let's assume an actual court order exists -- to deliver a software update to a specific user that allows FBI agents remote access to that device microphone? Or AT&T? Or Verizon? We know from recent history that AT&T is hardly likely to put up a fight.

I wrote more about the outer limits of the Feds' surveillance authority here: http://www.cnet.com/news/how-the-u-s-forces-net-firms-to-coo... Excerpt: "Precedents were established a decade or so ago when the government obtained legal orders compelling companies to install custom eavesdropping hardware on their networks..." And earlier: "In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that surveillance law is a "direct command to federal courts to compel, upon request, any assistance necessary to accomplish an electronic interception..."

In terms of a hierarchy of privacy protection, I trust technology > courts > Congress > DOJ oversight > FBI.
how can you run a totally different architecture from just a chroot jail? It doesn't make sense. How are you "on the metal" if you're running some totally different kernel from what the chroot-jail-host is running? You can't both be running the kernel on the metal...
That's not really a problem; it's a feature. The author is pointing out the significance of defense-in-depth to protect against the scenarios that can happen in light of what has happened.
Technically that post is against HN rules (don't use HN as a YC support forum) so it's not surprising.
I have no experience but I always figured it was similar to training in the armed forces. Put people through stressful situations to see how they perform under pressure, lack of sleep, etc.
Or:
hello|.?ello|h.?llo|he.?lo|hel.?o|hell.?
It requires Native Client, turn it off and it can't function regardless of your other settings.
Redid the Sublime Text review, used version 3.
@TheBiv: not even you wanted to at least write about it? :)

please add a more self-explanatory headline, it's an important health topic yet with a headline written like this it appears like clickbait
Surprising that Joyent used an extremely similar name as Amazon's extremely similar product, EC2 Container Service (EC2 expands to Elastic Compute Cloud, so the full name is Elastic Compute Cloud Container Service)

http://aws.amazon.com/ecs/
You're going to be in a big surprise when your property tax bill comes to mostly fund trillion dollar public retirement pension accounts. Property taxes of typical city can run up to $200 or $400 a month.
Now read the blog post about it! Andy Wingo is a great compiler hacker and he writes about a lot of things that he works on. http://wingolog.org/archives/2015/06/18/arrow-functions-comi...
Definitely this thing likes dogs =)
Not just the downpayment. If your monthlies are lower you're earning interest on those savings as well.
Discussed in this video: The U.S. Patent System is Broken: Derek Khanna on Trolling and Low-Quality Patents https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySUD3X0_Azc
Seeking Open Source Developers
Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you are in the development world here in South Florida and open to learning about local career opportunities.

Look forward to connecting here with other community members.... I am always here to help if I can!

Cheers,
I think when it comes to dev tools there are actually two fears: 1) that the kids will get locked into whatever platform they learn on, and 2) that kids will never get interested in programming at all.

I think developers tend to get worried about 1) because it is reflective of their personal concerns--they are constantly immersed in the battle for language and platform marketshare.

But 2) is probably more important in the long run. If a kid really gets into development, it's almost a certainty that they will try out other languages and tools over time. Heck they might have to--think how many kids started out on Atari or Amiga.

And if all they ever do is mess around with Swift and then move onto some other hobby, well, at least that is one more person in the world who has a sense of how programming works.
I bought a house 2 years ago. I bought it to "live in it" and not for "investment" (US East Coast for context).

The thing is that when you start buying houses/apartments/condos/townhomes to make money, that is when you could get into trouble.

Make no mistake though. Owning a home is very costly depending on the type of home and area. For example, my single family detached home costs me money for things like maintenance, repairs etc that come out of my pocket. Did I forget to mention "Property Taxes" ? In NJ, it can easily be over $1000 per month for a single family home worth 500K (yes it is not a typo. It is over $1000 per month). You are paying for all the schools and other stuff that you have access to.

So don't buy a home just for financial reasons. Buy a home if :

- You want your "own" place and not worry about landlord bullshit (i hated my landlord charging me bogus cleaning costs once the lease was over. fuck that)

- You are not looking to use the house as an ATM or credit card. Try to refrain from Cash out refinance type of offers. Don't get fooled into getting cash for another reset of your mortgage.

- You intend to live in the area hopefully for 5-7 years (ok things can go wrong but intention should be there)

- If something happens for the worse, you can still sell it (hint: don't buy in an area where it is hard to sell)

- Very important: Put at least 20% down. There is a reason this is preferred. It gives you instant equity which means if the price fluctuates a bit (7-10%) down, you are still positive in case you had to sell due to unforeseen circumstances. I know it is the American dream to own a home but people trying to buy with 0 down or even 5% down are inviting trouble in today's market at least. Try not to do that. Wait until you have the down payment.

Some more tips for rookie buyers:

Know the differences between buying say a condo vs a single family detached home. I personally don't like condos or even townhomes because of their stricter community rules/HOA crap that they charge you for. I was looking at a condo once which said that they don't allow outdoor bbqing unless you get permission. WTF. sorry, not for me. I want "feedom" to do things in my home. So for me, single family is the closest option. But for you it could be townhomes/condos for other reasons. So know the difference.
I'm not clear on the question.

The containers don't run a different kernel. They're just regular processes, in an fancy evolution of a chroot jail.

If you want to run something like Windows or FreeBSD, then you break out QEMU.
And routine maintenance and repair (e.g. complete roof replacements every 20 or so years).

Owning a home is super expensive even without a mortgage. So even going into retirement with a paid off house, you'll still want to set aside a decent pot of gold to keep that house "going" even aside from utilities (some of which are optional anyway, like cable/landline).
UPDATE 1-Fitbit shares Surge in stock market debut
I consider writing letters the top way to actually keep in touch, even if no one ever writes back, and it is a great exercise of the mind and body. When I first started writing letters, I was astounded by how difficult it was to write legible and coherent sentences. There were a lot of scribbled out words or sections and it was like I had forgotten how to write. It's very different from writing notes or the everyday writing that you do.

I don't do it that often, I think on average my friends who have moved away get 1 or 2 a year, but I usually include some extra stuff like a thumb drive with some music/mixes or a trinket I happened to buy that I thought someone would appreciate.

Also IMHO, there is also something sepcial about getting a package or letter in the mail that is unexpected and isn't a pre-approved credit card.
I think we're all missing the point of the article.

The author isn't claiming that free software is immune to this either (think about the flaw hiding in plain sight in OpenSSH for years). The author is saying that if you want to protect yourself from image / audio capture without your consent, make sure you can physically deactivate those features on your hardware in a way that software cannot physically re-activate them, i.e. mechanical switches.
As an intern, you usually get to shadow the manager, meaning you're still going to a lot of the events. And then you're expected to do all the work.
Can you do fizzbuzz in 15 minutes?

It doesn't have to compile or even be right. But you should at least be able to pseudo code your way through it, explain what you did, and discuss it.

For a professional programmer, anything less is just an excuse or an attitude problem.
Well, anybody who wants to use lambdas I'd imagine.

If you're going to write it out, you might as well just add the `function` keyword for clarity because you're not saving a ton of keystrokes.

function(a) { return b <= 7; }
mmmm, I haven't considered this case... I personally preferred the Coffeescript version like this: a->b<=7 which even without spaces is clearer but maybe they had something incompatible with it.
I'm suggesting that when debugging optimized code, you'll use -g as on native platforms. I'm speculating further that with wasm, decompilers will rise to the view source challenge.
Ask HN: Best ways to market an app for free?
Built an app called Rudder that enables users to receive quick feedback on upcoming decisions. It’s Survey Monkey, but geared towards being social and fun.

We think the target audience is 18-30 year olds, skewing female.

My core marketing initiatives have been: outreach to tech sites and bloggers, and social media campaigns. But other than that, I'm not sure how to get my product out there.
It's a new protocol that needs to be accepted on top of the blockchain with its own 3rd party sidechain, just like all the other proposed solutions that were never accepted by the community. Cool.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin is still 7 TPS.
Most of us aren't buying $100k homes either. National median home price is $219k. In the Sillicon Valley area it's $900k.
One other big point that iOS users don't have the same freedom of choosing other merchants to purchase music on their devices. Purchases made and downloads made in iOS from 3rd party services are not added to your music library to play, unlike Android where any app can add music to your library and any app can play it. So, any band/label deciding to remove their music from iTunes because they'd rather not forgo a full quarter of revenue will lose out on a good percentage of iOS users.
$20k would mean a $100k house which is hard to buy in most mid-size and larger cities unless you're willing to live a bit more remotely.
I've seen a quote for $100/mo for a $300k mortgage.
It might sound a little sarcastic, but i think in the vast majority of cases, if you have a deposit < 20% the right answer is to rent.
It also takes a fairly smart person to be genuinely funny, I think. The easiest types of humor to emulate are crude humor, sarcastic humor, and physical humor/comedy. But to be genuinely funny in a way that isn't overtly insulting to anyone takes some smarts, so maybe that's part of it too.
"No jobs" strikes me as too strong a statement.

Too few jobs from too few employers, especially specialized one like ours, is probably more accurate. And therefore a potential need to move to another area where there is a job needs to be factored in.
It's irrelevant to the argument. The author is making an appeal to the slippery slope (even if it's not happening right now, and even if Google is not doing it.... It could easily happen tomorrow and anyone could do it. Shutter your cameras and make sure your microphones can be physically deactivated).
Here’s the tool we’ve built to overcome remote isolation in our team
Showing the sensitive and non-sensitive variables as a greyed out bar graph "behind" the slider is a brilliant bit of data visualization.
> The 'Burning Platform' memo was by his own volition and it played a big part in the decline.

He wrote the memo but the question is to what extent it simply described the situation as it actually existed. If he had never written that memo, would Nokia be a competitive mobile platform ecosystem today? I find that hard to believe. I don't think it's realistic to blame so much on a few hundred words.
Says the 8 hour old troll account.
When a Shitty Kickstarter Becomes an Illegal Kickstarter
I disagree with the comments here; they are orders of magnitude bigger than their nearest competitor. And that difference will only get larger. I think Facebook will succeed through acquisitions in the future and you can think of facebook.com as not relevant for everyone under 20.

There is very rarely a reason to go elsewhere unless you want a hostel or hotel. AirBnB the brand is a virtual monopoly, I think even the founder virtually confirms as much in his How to start a startup talk... here is the text and a link.

Q: One more question, the question is, in this particular situation with Airbnb, a lot of people think it is not necessarily a technology company, but more of a marketing company.

Brian Chesky: Good question. I will answer the question with a story.

Alfred Lin: Let me preface that question with a series of questions. Do you today have propriety technology?

Brian Chesky: Yes.

Alfred Lin: Do you have a moat?

Brian Chesky: Yes

Alfred Lin: Do you have network effects?

Brian Chesky: Yes.

Alfred Lin: Do you have pricing power?

Brian Chesky: Yes

Alfred Lin: Do you have a good brand?

Brian Chesky: I think so .

Alfred Lin: Are you a monopoly?

Brian Chesky: I am not going to answer that one

<audience laughs>

https://clip.mn/video/yt-RfWgVWGEuGE
Of course I read the article. It is suggesting making local decentralized use of naturally occurring rainwater rather than relying on California's water system. My suggestion is that it is a poor solution because:

1. It has limited feasibility given the amount of rainfall in the area and investment required to create infrastructure to gather, process, and store.

2. It is unnecessary as the current infrastructure is sufficient if agricultural use, which contributes a relatively small amount to GDP for its large water footprint, was not prioritized were curtailed by reforming the riparian rights system.
This kind of PR? A lot of backlash? Being anti-copyleft gives you nothing but pats on the back by the tech journalists. Just look at Github.
This is why there needs to be a switch on all computers to physically turn the microphone off.

How is that hard?
Yes it is. ;) The author wants us to remember that we live in a world that has these technological possibilities.

That doctor's phone should have had a mechanical switch to disable the microphone, is the author's point.
Not sure if this is the case for you all or not, but several years ago I was consulting for a company who was having serious support issues similar to this where random customers swore they were sending support requests via email, yet the company wasn't receiving them. Because it was working properly for some and not others we didn't think it was an issue on the company side of things. In the end though it was overly strict spam filter setting was just junking emails randomly. I bring this up because there does seem to be a common trend occurring lately where people are saying they sent emails and you all are saying you didn't receive or are not seeing them.