kvn_95

26/45 is the best that I can do without cheating.

> But generally I agree with you that companies should prioritize problem solving skills over technical minutiae.

Unless, the company's goal is to hire someone with technical minutiae that they can pay the lowest wage possible :)

The way I see it, an interview goes both ways. They try to assess your fit in the company, and you're also trying to assess if the company is something you want to spend your time on.

I call this the "game show style" interview. You know the answer, you get $10k. Next question. You didn't know the answer? You're out of the show. Next contestant.

To me this is very disrespectful of your time and your capabilities. Once I was pumped to go into an interview with a very well known company in Sydney, but was dismayed to learn that they do this game show interview (with IQ test, no less!). I wouldn't want to waste my most precious resources (i.e. time) for a company that doesn't respect me.

This is such a recurring issue that I just stop using new-ish Google products for fear of the rug getting pulled under me.

I used to use Google Home, now renamed Nest Home, and now I just stop using them altogether since I don't know how long it will survive.

Pretty much the only thing from Google I use today are Gmail and Google Docs.

This thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24165445 describes what's going on internally at Google that led to that graveyard. Namely, how the promotion system encourages the creation of a new thing, and inadvertently de-emphasizes maintenance.

Secure communication is unfortunately still difficult for non-tech people. Most of the "easy" ones are tied to a smartphone, like Signal.

However if the goal is to prevent accidental leaking by using reply-all or adding an email address by mistake, then I think encryption features are nice-to-haves rather than a must-have. It's a very nice to have, but for non-techies and for your specific use case, usability is probably more important at this point.

I would thus recommend either:

* Discord (https://discord.com/), easy group voice chat should you need one

* Slack (https://slack.com/) using a free account, but they limit the number of messages for free accounts. May not be a deal-breaker for you.

* Element (https://element.io/) which was formerly Riot.im, and is encrypted and have more security features vs. the other two. Probably the most secure here.

All of them have their pluses and minuses, but all of them can be opened in a browser and require no smartphone. I suggest you pick one that you feel is easiest for your group to register and use, and provides the feature set that you require.

With regard to Discord, please make sure to read [0] before making any decisions :)

[0] https://cybernews.com/privacy/discord-privacy-tips-that-you-...

I admit I'm a bit confused about Microsoft's strategy here. So they're releasing two Xboxes at the same time: series X and series S, with the S positioned as the less powerful version of the X, with the promise that it can play the same game as the X.

The X seems to be a direct competitor to the PS5 [0], hardware-wise.

Wouldn't the release of the S and the X together forces game developers to code for the lowest common denominator (i.e. the S) and makes development more complex for the Xbox? Or is it a strategy to undercut the PS5 (normal edition and digital edition) in price?

[0] https://www.pushsquare.com/guides/ps5-vs-xbox-series-x-vs-xb...

This is a difficult question to quantify for me. "Few people" could be interpreted differently, and it depends on where you are. E.g. around the circle of people I know, I might be in the minority, but there is likely to be a niche where I'm part of the majority. It's just that I'm not aware or usually part of such a niche.

Second, what is the nature of the "truth" here? Is it mathematical/physical where there is no denying them? Is it opinion about something? Or historical facts? There are different level of truthiness there that I can see. However once you go into opinion-land, can it still be considered as truth?

I feel there are deeper reasons for this question.

I would also add that the replica set concept that is based on Raft [0] allows for built-in high availability, so the individual servers can be maintained while the whole set is running and servicing clients.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_(computer_science)

It also helps that the creator of the default storage engine (WiredTiger) are Keith Bostic of BerkeleyDB fame [0] and Michael Cahill, whose PhD thesis on serializable snapshot isolation [1] formed the basis of Postgres concurrency control [2]. Notably, both of them still work for MongoDB.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Bostic

[1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1376616.1376690

[2] https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/SSI

I played it using a basic Soundblaster card in the 90s and it’s already amazing. Lately I used DosBox with the MT32 emulation and was blown away by how good it sounds.

Here’s an instruction on DosBox MT32 emulation if you’re curious: https://blog.zyrain.org/2016/11/roland-mt-32-and-emulating-i...

Here’s a clip of the MT32 opening soundtrack if you just want to have a listen https://youtu.be/i3dB0qEcG20

Oh there’s like 5 of us playing it on the same pc so there’s always ideas thrown around. If nothing works then start clicking on everything :)

I don’t recall it to be as frustrating as say King’s Quest but then again it might be nostalgia.

Wow this really brings back memories! If Ron Gilbert is reading this, thanks for all your hard work on this game. This game was definitely one of the highlights of my childhood.

As to what makes the game great, I think it's the perfect combination of humor, pirates, and difficulty level that feels just right for a kid in the early 90s. It also has an amazing soundtrack.

Look! A three headed monkey!

At the rate of their price increase, buying 2nd hand will soon be the only option left to get Apple devices.

You know something is not right when their own website start to list trade-in prices. I mean, this is a phone, not a car.

And also the opting for the nuclear option when faced with defending their 30% app store commissions.

I love Apple devices, but at some point no one can afford them anymore. Strangely, I noticed that this has happened before when Steve Jobs left Apple for the first time. At that point, Apple's product lineup keep getting more complex and more expensive, until Jobs came back and cut both the product count and pricing back to sensible levels.

This time, there is no one that can go back there and do that anymore. Will be interesting to see where this goes.

I find this really sad. I do congratulate the students that managed to figure out the system and game them (they will go far!), but using this keyword salad grading thing is totally missing the point of education.

I came from a third world country where the "education system" is basically just a series of tests on memorization and conformance, and I'm hoping I would never see a system like that ever again.

Do you mean requires no configuration on the source or destination? :)

"Why do you need to buy an Audi RS6?"

"Dude, I'm maximizing my data transfer speed"

Oh this looks great! Thanks for this, checking it out.

Magic Wormhole (https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) if it's between OSes.

Between OSX, AirDrop works very well. I have sent >10GB files between Macs, quite quick as well.

I have never send a 10TB file so I wouldn't know. None of my drives are that large yet :)

To me it's like a quiz style of interview, where you're up on a whiteboard trying to answer a series of rapid fire questions. There is little discussion about why you're doing what you did, only a pass/fail signified by a nod or no-nod.

In contrast, a discussion style feels more like they're trying to figure out how you approach some problem, nudge you toward a solution if you're stuck (everyone usually gets stuck somewhere, especially if they have interview anxiety. I know I do), and discuss with you why you did what you did, discuss the pro/cons of some approaches, discuss alternatives, and so on.

The first style is just checking if you know the answers to some list of things, while the second style is more like trying to get to know you as a person and as an engineer.

The drawback of the second style is that it's more time consuming for both parties. Quite tiring as well. However, I think it's part of respecting your time and respecting you as an applicant.

Culture is a difficult thing to discover in a relatively short interview, but usually I look for certain signs. Typically if I feel that the interview is more like an extended discussion instead of like being in a game show, it's usually a good sign.

It's also things around the interview itself, e.g. are you being treated respectfully, or do you feel like being just one CV among many. Do they respect your time; do they talk as an equal, or as a superior person; do they get back to you if they don't go through; and more. I find that a company that treats their applicants respectfully typically have a more agreeable culture.

Of course this is just my experience. Some game show style interview companies may turn out to have a great culture, but what I find without fail is that if you're respected as an applicant, the culture can't be that bad :)

It is some measure of popularity/maintenance. In choosing something to use, I would first check the activity (as a proxy to rate of bugfixes, for one), and second I will check the number of stars (as a proxy to how many people are watching/using this).

If there are more stars, I would assume that if the owner of the repo dropped off the face of the earth, it's more likely that a new maintainer would step up.

From my personal observation, those two go together and I usually don't take them in isolation. One may be able to game the stars, but they won't be able to game activity (issues, commits, etc.), I'm hoping at least not in a meaningful manner.

I remember the time (heh) when this was all the rage.

It's an interesting concept, especially since the notion of 60 minutes - 12 hours are derived from Babylonian numbering system [1] and even without timezones I find myself having to stop and calculate minutes & hours all the time because they're not nicely divisible by 10 like the metric system.

Having said that, if the goal is to eliminate timezone confusion, we can all just use UTC time and be done with it :)

In short, it was an interesting concept, but even an impressionable young me at that time thinks it's more a marketing effort rather than a scientific effort to "fix" clocks.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-time-divi...

Although it's sad to see backward compatibility getting axed in newer consoles, it does come at a heavy cost [1]. It may make sense for OS like Windows/OSX, but personally I think I would rather have an all-new console without all the baggage, which may or may not add value during the lifetime of the console.

In fact, with most consoles having a lifespan of about 6 years on average [2], I would even say that there is a diminishing return in keeping that baggage around.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_compatibility#Costs

[2] https://za.ign.com/ps4/64636/feature/the-5-longest-console-l...

Regarding Master of Magic, there's a Java reimplementation that looks pretty good and I think worth checking out called MoM-IME [1]

For all other things about Master of Magic, Blake's website [2] has a good curated list. Warning: Blake took 90's website design & styling very seriously :)

[1]: https://sourceforge.net/projects/momime/

[2]: http://blakessanctum.x10.mx/Games/MoM/

For a reimplementation of Civ 5, I would recommend you to take a glance at Unciv (https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv). The development is quite active. It's made for Android, but runnable using Java in the terminal.

I was born in Jakarta and lived there for the most part of my life.

For the most part of Jakarta's history, the city's state owned water company never claimed that the piped water are actually potable. People with money resorted to buy bottled water for all their water needs, and people with less means resorted to using groundwater.

I believe that even large apartment complexes in Jakarta are pumping groundwater simply because the water company is so unreliable. I know for a fact that a large housing development near Jakarta even have their own pumps, pipes, and distribution network. Such is people's distrust of the state's water company. In fact, my parents used to draw from groundwater as well.

The amount of groundwater being used means that more seawater seeps in, and the displaced groundwater resulted in parts of the city slowly sinking into the ground.

In short, Jakarta was originally a Dutch port that was never meant to be a capital of anything. It is well past its use-by date, and was definitely never designed to fit millions of people.

I still do send emails to myself for safekeeping.

I also use specialized apps e.g. Apple Notes, Trello, etc. but usually I find email interfaces are easier, searchable, and I don't have to remember which app I stored that note in.

Link to the contentious draft law in question: https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m...

I agree that you don't own the email where the domain is not yours, but for the majority of people, setting up your own domain & mail is a large technical challenge. Even moving to a different email address may pose an insurmountable challenge (different interface, different workflow, etc.).

I think it's commendable that Apple is keeping the @mac.com for so long and not just simply cut off people's access to it.