_zachs

Thank you - really appreciate the kind feedback and you sharing this! I haven't heard about starfighters.io before so this is great to look into.

MeritFirst | Senior Software Engineer | Austin, TX (ONSITE) | Full-time

MeritFirst helps companies hire on demonstrated ability instead of pedigree. Candidates take realistic work-sample assessments, and employers get a signal they can trust more than a resume. We are backed by 8VC and Slow Ventures.

The hard part is building a signal good enough to influence real hiring decisions: fair to candidates, predictive for employers, explainable, and hard to game.

What you'll build:

- The product candidates use to prove what they can do

- The product employers use to find and hire them, and the scoring behind it

- The engineering bar the next hires will inherit, and helping us hire them

Stack: TypeScript, React, Next.js, Postgres.

We want people who have built and run real production software, debug from evidence, and do not need a fully specified roadmap. Early engineers, technical founders, and senior ICs do well here.

We use AI to move faster and to understand code better, but we do not blindly ship what it writes. You are expected to know and own every line you commit.

Start with the assessment: https://www.meritfirst.us/candidate/tests/40bfae94-dbf6-43fd...

Do you mind sharing which type you take (brand as well)? I tried magnesium glycinate supplements for two nights in a row and they kept me wide awake.

Yeah I'm sure the Uyghurs there can tell you all about the cool shit going down for them!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...

I think that's a pretty loaded statement and honestly wild way to make comparisons. What do "The Jews" have to do with this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvxV4knxpLQ

This isn't some claim, Hamas is happy to film themselves doing things like this, e.g., October 7th.

This is super important - even if it's not currently the best measure of degradation yet. Anecdotally, Opus 4.5 has gotten so bad for me it's almost adding time to my workflow instead saving it. It'd be nice to have more 3rd party measurements like this to hold Anthropic accountable.

MeritFirst | Software Engineer | Austin, TX (onsite)

MeritFirst is a VC-backed startup building a new way to identify talent, where intelligence, problem-solving, and adaptability matter more than credentials. We're a small, profitable team using a modern stack (TypeScript, Next.js, Postgres/Drizzle, Vercel).

You'll work side-by-side with the founders, own features end-to-end, and have direct input into product decisions. Competitive salary + equity.

Apply here: https://meritfirst.us/candidate/tests/46e6bb96-3c1e-4451-ac8...

MeritFirst | Software Engineer | Austin, TX (onsite)

MeritFirst is a VC-backed startup building a new way to identify talent, where intelligence, problem-solving, and adaptability matter more than credentials. We're a small, profitable team using a modern stack (TypeScript, Next.js, Postgres/Drizzle, Vercel).

You'll work side-by-side with the founders, own features end-to-end, and have direct input into product decisions. Competitive salary + equity.

Apply here: https://meritfirst.us/candidate/tests/46e6bb96-3c1e-4451-ac8...

You can take kahnclusions' word for it, or you can take Eugene Wigner's:

> I have known a great many intelligent people in my life. I knew Planck, von Laue and Heisenberg. Paul Dirac was my brother in law; Leo Szilard and Edward Teller have been among my closest friends; and Albert Einstein was a good friend, too. But none of them had a mind as quick and acute as Jancsi (John) von Neumann. I have often remarked this in the presence of those men and no one ever disputed. But Einstein's understanding was deeper even than von Neumann's. His mind was both more penetrating and more original than von Neumann's. And that is a very remarkable statement. Einstein took an extraordinary pleasure in invention. Two of his greatest inventions are the Special and General Theories of Relativity; and for all of Jancsi's brilliance, he never produced anything as original.

Really cool! Like i_c_b mentioned my only feedback is that, even in the practice mode, there's a lot of negative feedback.

I'd recommend adding a step to the practice mode where whatever highlighted region of the fretboard you're practicing has all of the notes visible, and then over time the notes are taken away as you build up your memorization.

Thanks for the insight! At a high-level, how did Likes work when you were at Twitter? Were a certain amount of Like requests batched then applied at the DB level at the same time to ease writes?

Not too long ago I tried getting Haskell Language Server, GHC, Cabal, Stack, etc. to play nice together in Neovim but didn't have much luck. Has anyone else here had luck with Neovim + Haskell?

Agreed! I was excited because I thought I was going to get a better explanation of Foldable than what the linked docs provide!

Agreed! The article seems more geared towards a lesson teaching teamwork and not being a code cowboy than about clean code.

This looks awesome! Any way to subscribe for when a Linux version is available?

Interesting! Is this supposed to be an easier-to-read Rust?

Once they remove the touch bar and add back normal function keys I'll switch back from my ThinkPad to a Macbook Pro.

> Through 2015, the Airbus A320 family has experienced 0.12 fatal hull-loss accidents for every million takeoffs, and 0.26 total hull-loss accidents for every million takeoffs; one of the lowest fatality rates of any airliner.[3]

That's just completely not true: https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-most-dangerous-cities-i...

I'm stuck between learning Clojure and Elixir (for a backend that will power a web app). The one thing pulling me towards Clojure is ClojureScript, and the fact that I'd be able to write a frontend and backend with the same syntax.

My experience is very anecdotal, but there's a point where the pay/stock options are definitely enough to keep people around. I have a few friends in this exact position now, where the golden handcuffs are too sweet for them to walk.

I'll build you a clone and charge $0.83 a month! Sound good?

What are you building with Rust? Curious about its prod usage!

Don't develop on Windows but I hear their new WSL2 lets you have a pretty well-working Linux environment.

Looks cool! I've definitely wanted an easy way to take notes from my browser and haven't found the perfect solution yet, will give this a try.

Any recommendation for books to read?

`getFriends(userId)`, how's that? :D

I disagree with the author’s points that you can’t represent a graph with a single interface. Write an interface with the methods you need, i.e., `findNeighbors()`, `getAllFriends()`, `retrieveDogPhotos()`, and implement it for the specific underlying data structure/implementation of Graph you choose later. A graph is a graph, the interface doesn’t care if you’re using an adjacency matrix or a node. I don’t see how writing a mathematical function would be more robust and helpful in designing and implementing those features.

Engineering at Twitter must be a constant context switch. Every quarter there’s a new blog post about some new re-design they’re working on.

Cool! Does she want a medal or something? I'm not sure why people feel like they should be rewarded by their own company for publicly going against them. Talk about entitlement.