palisade

I wouldn't do that to them. They have a right to interview how they want. I just wasn't good enough. They were looking for someone who could think on their feet under pressure in the moment and I'm not that guy.

I need a quiet place to sit and think something through and plan it out. It is why I did well on the test portion but not on site surrounded by interrogators. In those kind of situations I kind of feel like I'm the in the movie Swordfish where they're like, "Hack that server you have sixty seconds! (gun to head)" The difference is, I would have been dead.

The employer informed me how my results fared.

I went back and looked at the emails. I can't edit my original comment so I'll jot the corrections here. They gave 3 days not a week. I completed the submission in 7 hours, they required you track how many hours you spent and when. I used a genetic algorithm to solve the problem. And, I took advantage of multiple cores if they were available to divide the work load.

Looking at the email there were signs even in their review of my submission that their outlook wasn't completely rosy. They mentioned things like how I failed to correct for differential conversion factors based on global location and stuff like that.

Skipping the question obviously didn't work out for me as I didn't get the position.

It was a weird experience to be put on the spot with such great skepticism with all my past accomplishments and knowing how much they respected my test submission. In a way it was humiliating. I didn't leave that interview feeling very good about myself. I still regret it to this day. In some ways I wish I could go back in time and pass on the interview, I think I would be more confident today.

I once interviewed at a company that had you write a traveling salesman program where you were planning the shortest path of flights between cities. It was a take home test where you were given at least a week to complete it. I completed the test in record setting time (3 days earlier than most), mine was the only one that was fully documented with comments (no one else bothered to do this), they said I had the most visually stunning user interface (most were ugly or unusable; I even animated the plane flying between cities), the program came to the outcome in the shortest runnable time, out of all the submitters they said my program was the most optimized solution (not the best ever made, but the best submitted to this company so far), and mine was the only one that actually worked correctly and ran without flaws. They then proceeded to have me come in for the 6 hour interview in which they asked questions like, "Write a working hash table from scratch on the whiteboard." I got nervous and passed the question, they ended the interview early and rejected my application.

No matter how bad the code is I always remind myself that this ancient code made the company a lot of money which they are now paying me to improve on.

Yea

You can actually grab non-google Chromium. This site keeps track of the latest stable and nightly builds and how to download them directly: https://chromium.woolyss.com/ You won't receive automatic updates, or be able to login to your google chrome account, etc. The theme is slightly different in color but it works exactly like normal Chrome. Chromium is the open source project that Chrome is based on, originally it was a web browser built by the KDE team for Linux.

I disagree that Chromium is evil. Personally, I use Firefox because I like it better. Though, on Android I use Brave which is based on Chromium and has ad blocking, privacy, and anti-fingerprinting built-in. Just a really quick easy way to get all of that in a simple no fuss package.

The ancient Egyptians dug canals from the Nile all the way up to the base of the pyramids they were in the process of building. Then they built rafts that they ferried the stones from the quarries all the way to the build sites. Just in case anyone was wondering. Happy Easter!

Before, during and the week after April fools I do not read the news at all because I just assume it is all garbage. Just my two cents.

This seems to be the reason they put the telemetry in. They were solving a bug related to the time calculation feature. And, needed to discover if any customers had issues after the change was made.

https://github.com/Microsoft/calculator/blob/057401f5f2b4bb1...

According to the formula I provided, to slerp for example, rotors require lambda and theta. Whereas quaternions only require the lambda. Is there an alternative I'm missing?

Partially true, internally libraries represent the rotor as just four scalars and can convert these to a quaternion. However, to actually make use of the rotor to do anything useful, e.g. interpolate, which is a power quaternion math has innately, you need to provide a lot more external information; plane origin vector, bivector, angle. A 3D file format storing the transformations between joints of the skeleton of a character for example would have to provide these extra bits of information in order to store the frames to perform inverse kinematics.

Likewise, if you needed to store or transmit spherical camera interpolations or non-player or player character transitions over a network this information would also have to be provided. You could perhaps do some optimization, e.g. only sometimes transmitting the origin once and then only sending the bivectors and angles in some cases which still would waste bytes and increase complexity. And, sometimes you couldn't so you'd have to send the whole thing.

But, with a quaternion you get this for free without any logical gymnastics via the previous four scalars to the next four scalars between delta frames. And, in the case of slerp only the lambda of time.

Now you can argue that a rotor could be used locally and then when storage/transmission is required you could convert to and use quaternion math to perform the necessary interpolations and thereby get the space savings. However, this article is specifically asking for the complete removal of quaternions from the field of computer science.

Unless I'm misunderstanding. Though I haven't seen a code example where rotors don't require this extra information. For example, in libvsr they have examples that require all these pieces for each frame. However, maybe that is an inefficient or naive implementation.

I did find this: http://geometry.mrao.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/01...

Which provided a formula for rotor slerp: R(lambda) = (1.0 / sin(theta)) * (sin((1 - lambda) * theta) * R0 + sin(lambda * theta) * R1)

If that is the case, then the bare minimum information required is still more than a quaternion. We'd require the lambda, theta, and R0 (4 scalars), R1 (4 scalars).

Quats can be represented with (x, y, z, w). Rotors require a vector, bivector and angle (vec_x, vec_y, vec_z, bivec_x, bivec_y, bivec_z, theta). If you are storing or transmitting a quaternion it consumes less space and in 3D simulations or games a quaternion is therefore advantageous. 3D file formats would explode in size if rotors were used. And, more network packet fragments would be needed to encapsulate a world state update of moving objects, npc and players. That would waste bandwidth (therefore $), cause "rubberbanding" and increase latency.

One of my heroes. You'll be missed! Can we get a cure for cancer?!

Most of humanity assumes we are meant to be here. It was a more interesting thought experiment to consider that we might be a happy accident.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. The problem with coming up with a test for being in a simulation is that the creator of the simulation might simply overwrite our memories. They could make us believe we succeeded in proving the simulation hypothesis false. There really isn't a way to test this properly when you aren't able to experience reality objectively. We're on the inside.

Side Note: I had an interesting debate just last night with some friends where I pointed out the creator of the universe might not even be aware of the aberration of our existence in it and from a high level thinks everything is running smoothly. And, we haven't made a big enough dent in the universe to get noticed. The question then becomes, if we for example destroyed a star or entire solar system to get the creator's attention would they go, "WHAT IS THIS?!" and delete the aberration? Contact us? Or, simply observe? Note: I was discussing a real god at the time, but my friend thought I was referring to a creator in the context of simulation theory at the time. Still an interesting brain buster either way.

Also, if it's true the creator is more of a macroscopic thinker than microscopic and are "asleep at the wheel" then it kind of explains a lot of things regarding injustices in the world. The creator just glances at the universe from time to time says to themselves, "Well, the galaxies are still spinning. All is well."

No offense to any religion. It was just a fun thought experiment.

My apologies! I didn't mean the "Very confusing" comment as an ad hominem attack.

Seeing it from the production side I don't see that there is any attempt to suppress production. Everyone wants a good harvest and to produce as much product as they can. And, sometimes mother nature allows for it.

I feel there are honest attempts to feed people with that remaining food. And, there is the issue that sending food constantly to another country in need doesn't really address the problem. To paraphrase an old proverb, "Give a person a fish and they will eat for a day. Teach them to fish and they will eat for a lifetime." Ultimately, the food should be grown locally as much as possible to meet at least basic needs. Everything imported beyond that should be mere excess. That is how we will one day feed the world.

Thanks for the book btw.

Food is perishable. The population rises exponentially. I don't personally believe anyone is purposely destroying food for political reasons that I'm aware of. A great deal is shipped to 3rd world countries in an attempt to help feed their populations where possible. And, even here at home many grocery stores attempt to redistribute food that is about to expire to homeless and poor communities. More can be and should be done. I don't mean to come off as confrontational. If you have some articles that point to this I'd like to read them. That is clearly wrong and shouldn't be happening if it is.

Edit: I'd like to point out though, it seems odd that you are arguing for limiting/destroying production by turning farmland into parks. But then go on to suggest that OECD countries are attempting to limit production unfairly? Very confusing.

Edit 2: My dad was also part of a charitable group that helped provide seeds and training to other countries in need in an attempt to help them to establish their own self-sustaining agricultural industry.

Yes, a lot of small land holdings. There are large corps and also government owned/run farms, but a vast majority of agriculture in the u.s. is family run. Which is not a bad thing, because they love what they do and we need them as a society. My family owns a farm producing corn / wheat / soy / green beans / etc, mostly run by my Dad and the work rented out to another local farmer. Some of the corn is used for fuel production. The rest of us have moved into suburbia/cities in various roles; managers, business owners, software, bartenders, etc. I develop software for example, myself.

Nope, even small farms receive them. And, most of the farms in the U.S. are actually owned by rural families, not large corporations. Edit: When I think of evil megacorp PACs and their lobbyists, I don't think of agriculture at all. Farmers have it rough; droughts, infestations, blights, hedging bets, fabricated news / inaccurate prices to keep exports flowing that eat their bottom lines, high machinery and supplies costs and the already tough job of growing something from nothing while meeting stiff competition. Not to mention being a thankless job. Few care or understand how the food ends up on their table.

I think you misunderstand the purpose of the subsidies. It isn't that the government wants these farms to completely stop producing. Soil conservation is about preventing dust storms by rotating different crops between fields and then letting overused fields be overtaken by nature again before coming back and reseeding them again years later. Edit: Also, there is never enough food to contribute to solving world hunger or supplying the ever growing demand of a rising human population, and their pets mind you who also consume part of the production. You do -not- want to "permanently reduce" farmland.

I've had a theory for a while that we might be in a simulation run for historical purposes. That in a distant future, we or other civilizations evolved to a point where we were capable of creating a simulation of our own universe for the purpose of discovering more about the history of our universe and ourselves as a scientific endeavor. That or this is a virtual prison complex in which we are reevaluated for release back into society in the external reality. Just a couple of interesting thought experiments I've had.

Another thing no one considers. If the simulator or maintainers of the simulation identify that the individuals being simulated are aware of or close to determining they are in a simulation, they may alter the observations in the minds of the individuals being simulated to indicate there is no simulation.

My understanding of it is that 100,000+ are in reserve for existing companies / sites already registered. All you have to do is contact them to let them know, with proof, that you want ownership of yours. After launch there will be a "sunrise" period where if you register with ICANN, and then provide proof to handshake, they will give you ownership. I'm not sure how long that period lasts, I'm guessing for a long time until they feel ICANN is no longer relevant if I had to guess.

The goal of the project seems admirable. Potentially, this can help fund open source initiatives which are sorely underfunded while solving the "how do we find a domain in a decentralized way and verify its trust" issue that currently exists. I suppose time will tell, though.

"If you own a name in the existing root zone or the Alexa top 100k, your name is waiting for you on the blockchain. You are able to claim it by publishing a DNSSEC ownership proof – a cryptographic proof that you own the name on ICANN’s system. Your name must have a valid DNSSEC setup in order for the claim to be created. If you do not have DNSSEC set up, don’t worry – you can set it up after the handshake blockchain launches and proofs will still be accepted retroactively."

https://handshake-org.github.io/guides/claims.html

Untraceable assassination.

The original poster was discussing the OpenPGP feature. The U2F feature of YubiKey wasn't compromised by the vulnerability.

The vulnerability is real and still exists. There was even someone in this HN thread that was planning to use an old key fob Arstechnica sent him, specifically for the OpenPGP feature.

I should have split my backup and vulnerability comments into two, because they've sparked two unrelated debates. It started out as such a simple comment! :)

Deleted

Edit: In answer to your response. Yup.

Your virus is on a machine in the network, therefore you're in the network. At that point, it is a matter of exploring the network, fingerprinting systems, scraping for exploits, and attempting intrusions. Or, waiting until an administrator does something silly like attempt to use their privileges on the machine to accomplish some task. I believe this was exactly how the Sony hack was conducted.

Edit: Also, at some point the employee will be reissued a new key fob for the "broken" one and at that point they will enter their credentials into the network again on that machine giving you access.

Edit 2: I guess a procedure that could prevent this is to require I.T. check the serial number of a fob that has been reported as "broken" thereby verifying there hasn't been a potential intrusion.

Potentially difficult if you were relying on a unique product like yubikey which doesn't have a 1 to 1 competitor in the industry at the moment.