palisade

I've pointed out flaws to the dev team at MS they were pretty quick about acknowledging it and fixing the problem. There were some showstoppers in the media encoders early on when they were developing win10. The only thing they asked is that I prove the issue was real and as soon as I did they were on top of it.

They were also pretty quick and helpful with answering any question I had. I guess it depends on what team you get ahold of. Or, maybe how you ask the questions. I always try to be polite and patient, which is hard to do when you're in a time crunch.

They really were trying to push azure hard in a situation that didn't require it. It was odd at the time. I chalked it up to the team evangelizing a new feature that they knew was going to rake in money, so they were required to bring it up. I remember it was funny and a little annoying to have to keep saying no... now let's get back on topic.

But, they never insulted me. It was a very professional experience. Sad to hear this kind of thing is happening now.

The interview with Google is a pretty harrowing test.

Not sure if this might be related but humans have a stimulants addiction that most primates generally don't. I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned by the article.

You run the risk of an echo chamber with this method, though. Where like-minded groups of individuals gang up on others to keep opinions they find unpopular concealed. Which may be desirable depending on the goal of your platform or service. But, it is something to be aware you are causing.

I wonder what would happen if you used this technique to compress sonoluminescence?

https://hackaday.com/2019/09/06/capture-a-star-in-a-jar-with...

Which is a fun project you can do at home on your kitchen counter and has mystified scientists since 1934. Some theories suggest it is a fusion reaction and that there is a plasma hotter than the sun forming inside the bubble.

I'm wondering what would happen if they could manage to compress the light as it formed. Maybe it could sustain the light for longer periods of time or increase its intensity? It would probably be difficult to time a sub-nanosecond compression of this kind, though.

Of all the companies they could have been acquired by we're probably lucky it was Epic.

I know that everyone is commenting that this is the end of their independence. But, Epic Games has been really good to everyone they've acquired. Quixel is a great example. They protected Improbable when it was under licensing attack by Unity and they gave away $25 mil to help fund development for them when they didn't have to. They've given out lots of no strings attached megagrants when they didn't have to and they receive no direct revenue from. Those grants have helped independent open source 3rd party tools like Blender and Krita with no strings and no required oversight from Epic. And, some of those megagrants helped Unity and not Epic, e.g. the dialogue tool, but they didn't take backsies on their grant. They designed the grants to help the entire game industry and not just them. They have a very lawful good alignment as a company. They're an example of a really decent parent company IMHO. Also, Epic has a really solid financial foundation from Fortnite and their Unreal game engine so they're easily able to give independence to their subsidiaries without nervously micromanaging. Bandcamp is awesome so I hope I'm right.

It does not seem to be mentioned here. But, my #1 hardening suggestion is install the Tripwire IDS (Intrusion Detection System). It is probably the best thing you could ever do for yourself as a system administrator. It integrity checks the entire file system. If anything happens to your system that you didn't authorize you're notified of it immediately. After initial install it is important to minimize and exclude false positives so that you end up with a system that rarely changes in ways you don't expect or can at least explain.

Another really useful tool is logwatch.

I actually caught an intruder this way hijacking my system several years ago. They removed rkhunter, chkrootkit and a variety of log files. And, modified lines in the last logged in users log. But, a combination of logwatch and tripwire caught it.

https://opensource.com/article/18/1/securing-linux-filesyste...

My story is a bit different. I started at a company where the engineers hated the customer support team and refused to do any work for them, because they would ask for quite a lot of help. At some point, I finished all of my work early and they kept asking our team for help. I noticed the other teammates wouldn't give them the time day.

But, all of their requests ultimately helped our customers which was good for the company. And, more importantly, it helped some of our best customers that were keeping the lights on. I decided to go ahead and help them complete several of the surprisingly difficult tasks for quite a variety of customers. Several of those customers had threatened to drop us and scratching those itches were all they really needed to feel comfortable with our products.

I half regretted it later on when I was laid off and I asked for recommendations from my fellow team members and manager. They declined. I turned to ask for recommendations from the support team I had helped. They said, "You didn't accomplish anything. Why would we recommend you?"

I said, "Wait, what are you talking about? I helped you with so many customer issues that were show stoppers, when no one else would." I was a bit offended and depressed by this, because I didn't expect it.

And, then they responded that if you can list us a few of the things you think you did for us we'll think about it. I listed a dozen in fairly extensive detail. They did apologize and agreed to recommended me but it was done so grudgingly. It was a very strong lesson to me that the other engineers there already understood well. But, I was hard working, naïve and socially awkward. And, in the end I almost walked away with nothing to show for it.

Yeah, it also confers organ damage for life and/or death. lol. Get the vaccine, nerds.

It's not about lazyness. It is a matter of having all your needs and wants fulfilled and not needing to work. Where you can finally simply pursue hobbies. Why do any kind of labor if everything is met. Especially janitorial, plumbing, heavy lifting, dredging in miserable conditions, or any other number of difficult thankless jobs.

Go watch dirty jobs the tv show, it's an eye opener. There are even people who climb down in sewers and scrap our feces off the walls in big cities. Who would want to do that if they could just get on UBI and build gokarts in their spare time instead.

You know those wind turbines the power grid relies on? Dirty jobs had an episode that showed how they have to climb up inside them, crawl into really tight spaces, and clean out debris to keep the turbines functioning. It's a tough, harrowing, frightening and claustrophobic experience.

When the pipes in your house malfunction causing gallons of water and feces to spray out of the toilet onto the nice wood floor you just installed in your newly government granted free time. But, you can't call a plumber because they're all on UBI watching Bob Ross howto videos and painting beautiful landscapes, remember the name Andrew Yang.

A floating habitat on Venus is actually more attractive. Venus (upper atmosphere): -human livable temperatures with modest temperature control -Earth-like pressure (Himalayans) leads to slow leaks that can be patched, and pressure can be increased inside to stop the leaks inward -protected by thick atmosphere from radiation, meteors, asteroids -strong magnetic field against radiation -atmosphere still thin enough for solar panel energy use -the sulfuric acid atmosphere requires a Teflon coating and/or mixing Teflon particles with the metals during fabrication -the escape velocity from the upper atmosphere is low and requires a small rocket and not much fuel, leaving more fuel for return trips -distance between Earth and Venus is 3 months, versus 6 months to a 1 year depending on the window of opportunity.. that means you can rescue crews faster, get them supplies quicker, and replace crew sooner on Venus -oxygen on Venus has a strong lifting power, you can float entire heavy concrete and steel cities on massive platforms, think cloud city from Star Wars(tm) -aerodynamics work similarly to Earth; airships (dirigibles), airplanes, drones are all possible here Concept mission to Venus compliments of NASA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0az7DEwG68A

Mars: -inhospitable temperatures not suitable for human or plant life -explosive decompression due to a micro-meteorite causing a hole -no atmosphere to protect against radiation or projectiles -weak magnetic field providing no protection -violent unpredictable wind storms on the surface -unbreathable atmosphere -the escape velocity from Mars requires a massive rocket equivalent to the one we use to leave Earth and therefore more fuel leaving less payload for delivering other resources or supplies -the distance is 6 months to 1 year depending on the window of opportunity, leading to some NASA scientists to suggest we should find it acceptable that it as a suicide mission with no hope of return

Rotating space station: -high risk from impacts -no atmosphere to protect against radiation or projectiles -no magnetic field providing no protection -danger from space debris from previous missions -no surrounding breathable atmosphere -close distance makes resupplying and re-crewing more tenable -requires constant fuel and attention to not de-orbit -does not establish a permanent residence -not a base of significant distance for further operations to the rest of the solar system

By being better than everyone else.

I have imposter syndrome, and what's worse I'm really shy and have trouble looking people in the eye which makes me seem like a liar. What helps me a lot is the move companies are making towards remote interviews. For some reason with skype I can look people right in the eye, it's probably because they're off-center visually or because I know they're not really here. However, that only helps with the shyness it doesn't really solve the imposter part. And, it's not because I'm not competent, I've successfully shipped every project I've ever been part of.

If you think that's bad. Check this out: https://www.wired.com/2010/10/webcam-spy-settlement/

I hate open office plans. There, I said it. Take your modern "I can see the whole office by glancing in a 360 degree circle," and shove it.

I have so many war stories there's not enough space on HN to contain them. I'll just state my overall experience. I write elegant well designed code, but generally speaking you won't find that anywhere especially if you're working in teams. Unless the code is all written by one person who had a chance to design and implement it well solely by themselves with adequate time, it's going to be a mishmash of they just didn't have time and the pressure was on.

I'm of the mindset that if it works, it's good code regardless if it isn't. This I think is the healthiest mindset to have in any team. I will refactor things slowly to clean up issues and of course my own code is well thought out and integrated into the codebase regardless how reckless anyone else is being. Any other way of interacting with a team would be antisocial and not beneficial ultimately. The way I see it is they wouldn't be paying me if there wasn't more work to do. The most important thing is that it works and the customer is happy. Your disappointment with elegance or coverage comes second to that.

The thing that actually annoys me is when, having exceeded my own delivery deadlines and everyone else's if I provide value added like a new feature that puts us far ahead of our competition I get pushback. Management doesn't want to have to maintain it. Even though my code is really solid compared to the rest of the garbage going in there. They just see me as a plumber fixing a leaky pipe and don't want anything further. I get that there's ROI and whatnot but it still bothers me when I show them some next level shit and I'm told to mothball it. Especially when I'm the reason we're usually way ahead of schedule. </rant>

I almost never weigh in on political stuff. But, F* that. Do you want to be able to never afford anything? Because, that's a good start. What we really need to do is balance the budget by cutting back on the quantity and expensiveness of existing programs. The government needs to optimize. We are spending too much. Which are dirty words no one wants to hear or perform.

This might be an unpopular opinion. But, I found this pretty funny.

At least in Alexander the Great's case he was the epitome of youth, health and virility. Considered an unstoppable force and then he dies quite suddenly. It was odd.

Ruby was under the delusion that the world would forgive him for it because everyone hated Oswald so much for having offed JFK. And, that he would be labeled a national hero.

I figured they already knew since they're watching all social media and communications anyways. In addition, foreign adversaries also hide messages in seemingly random but innocuous comments on forums and blogs made to look like real user communication but makes no sense to anyone but their intended target.

More importantly as the planet's "lungs" the Amazon filters a great quantity of carbon dioxide from the air.

I think Noah's point was that homebrew wasn't a simple tool. And, not only was it evidence of the developer's capabilities but it was also used extensively by all of the employer's own engineers. A tool they all relied heavily on to get their own jobs done. Making it clear he could create software they found important for their own production. And, made it possible for them to deliver service to billions of users.

He got nervous on the whiteboard when asked a relatively simple question. They proceeded to shut him out of the position, completely disregarding his ample qualifications signified by their extensive use of his product. Which is a kind of tragedy.

Comparing an A/C unit to rocket science isn't an equivalent comparison. I can't think of a good analogy to be honest, but that isn't even close.

No other field I can think of really has the problem ours does. You can either make A/C units and rockets, or you can't.

But, in software engineering, it is highly possible to be able to say..... develop high quality GPS mapping software from scratch used by the Navy. Then turn around and have a company making word processing software reject you because you couldn't write a Mandelbrot fractal generator from memory on a whiteboard with a marker.

The fractal generator has zero to do with their word processing product and will never be a useful test of your abilities. Clearly the guy who made GPS mapping software can figure out how to write a word processor. Not to mention, they already have the word processor written so he'd only be assisting them in maintaining their existing code. In other words, he's already demonstrated his ability to write and maintain code of a high caliber. None of it makes any sense.

I really don't think any other field has this issue. It is weird as hell, and unusually pervasive in our culture.

Edit: It won't let me hit reply on your comment below. I think we've hit the maximum length for this comment thread. But, I'll respond by saying I don't know what position he was applying for. I'm not sure he ever explained beyond that tweet. The first I heard about it was Noah mentioning it. But, if it made their lives easier so they can deliver products on time to their own customers it makes sense they have a position somewhere in their company that would be a fit for him. At the very least it proves he is a good developer. Massive systems like the ones Google creates are made by many good engineers working together to make it possible.

The point was they knew he was a good dev.

Ah well the hash table wasn't exotic.

But, software engineering interviews are pretty rough. It is a uniquely miserable experience. Since I'm a temp worker I have a lot of them. They don't get easier.

I don't know of anyone who likes high pressure time crunch interrogations except maybe the ones getting to do the interrogating part.

A take home test isn't so bad. But, ya if you asked me today if I'd be willing to do one like that again I'd say probably not unless I was desperate. The reality is, it is a lot of effort to put in for it to all come crashing down with a rejection anyway. When you're applying at dozens of companies if they're all requiring that level of time and mental commitment from you, you can't swing it really and it's stressful. Interviewing and being under financial pressure at the same time is already a stressful position to be in, let alone being mentally and emotionally flogged for it.

All the jobs I was ever hired onto the hiring manager just had a good gut feeling about me and the tests never mattered. And, they were happy with my work.

The ones that never hire me usually rely on all the employees to vote on you, if even one says no you're out. Or, the ones that are very fixated on your GPA or whether you can invert a binary tree on the whiteboard while they yell at you "Wrong!" along the way.

I went back and looked through my emails with them. When I asked why they rejected not only did the cite the interview questions as a problem they didn't like that I was vague in response to "What is your GPA?" I had responded "Average"

I've worked on pretty cool projects since then at other companies. And, it isn't the only interview I've ever had like that, it is more common than I would like. It is sometimes very hard for me to prove myself. Even though I've had plenty of jobs in the past with proof I can code and with good references. I sometimes feel like I'm an imposter, even while kicking ass on a project.