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xen0

606 karma · joined February 19, 2020

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xen0··on Leveling up in job interviews for software engineers (2022)
The flip side is 'do you want to work for someone who's ego is so fragile that asking a couple of questions might tank your interview'?

Maybe you're OK navigating around that person, but many are not, and I'd rather not have to bother.

Yeah, there's only so much you can glean, but just like they're looking for red flags from you, you're looking for red flags from them.

xen0··on Far Cry 1.34 source code (2006)
The secret sauce is more than a 10 year old engine.
xen0··on Google warns its own employees: Do not use code generated by Bard
It's really easy to use it without violating policies.

In fact, we were literally asked to.

xen0··on Should you take off your shoes in the house? Scientists weigh in. – CBS News
I personally won't have a bath or shower with first donning my drysuit, wearing a hard hat and steel toe cap boots is mandatory in my kitchen, and I keep said boots next to my bed at night so I can put them on when I need the bathroom at night.
xen0··on George Takei recalls his childhood in an internment camp
The Wikipedia article linked literally says that they were not "unaware". It's right there in the second paragraph.

> The pilot then told the Haradas about the attack and the two agreed to help him. Nishikaichi and Yoshio Harada overcame a guard and escaped to destroy the plane and papers, then took Niihauans Benehakaka "Ben" Kanahele and his wife Kealoha "Ella" Kanahele prisoner.

xen0··on Tesla cancels all right-hand drive orders for Model S and X
Encountered a few enterprising Germans driving their own cars on my last trip to Cornwall.

Perhaps, unlike tourists driving RHD cars, they're much more able to kiss the hedge on the narrow roads there without fear when other cars have to pass.

xen0··on Ask HN: Is "At which age did you start coding?” a good data point for hiring?
Beyond a single course at school I took when I was 17, I only really started programming when I was 21 and started my career.

I like to think I've enjoyed some success over the past 11 years, but I would definitely fail your friend's arbitrary criteria.

xen0··on Alien Supercivilizations Absent from 100k Nearby Galaxies (2015)
But growing another cow is straightforward.
xen0··on Judge finds Google destroyed evidence and repeatedly lied to the court [pdf]
This doesn't work when someone else outside of the group initiates a conversation.

It's a fantastic feature; meaning I am never distracted on a European Monday morning by what someone sent me on an American Friday afternoon. ;)

xen0··on AI Rap Battle – ChatGPT vs. Bard – Text, Audio, and Video
I lost it when, in the first round, ChatGPT called out one of the reasons why Bard was so poor.
xen0··on Trunk-Based Development: Game Changers
Quite a lot of people don't bother with the Mercurial layer, and it barely got a mention at my orientation three years ago.
xen0··on How to smooth and spread A* paths for an RTS
In war, everything is simple but the simplest things are hard.

I feel that Brood War embodies this part of Clausewitz quite well.

xen0··on Mark Zuckerberg doesn't like seeing 'managers managing managers'
Start with one Sergeant Major General, then cut the off letters to taste.
xen0··on An intutive counterexample to the axiom of choice
You're right that there's a problem with 'Let f be a choice function on...', but that's the problem the axiom of choice solves. Sure, it's non-constructive; you don't know much about f, just that it exists and f(s) is in s (for all sets s that are subsets of S).

The question is specifically what weird undefinable numbers have to do with anything; why those are specifically a problem.

Let S be the set of all non-finitely defined real numbers.

Let (Sn) be the sequence of sets such that Sn = {s in S : n-1 < s < n}

Am I allowed to say "let s1 be an element of S1"? Or "s2 an element of S2"? (Note that we don't need the axiom of choice to get a choice function for this sequence; I can easily construct one; does that change anything?).

xen0··on An intutive counterexample to the axiom of choice
So the statement "let x be an element of y" is already problematic?

If so, your problem is not with the axiom of choice.

Edit: "Not being able to describe the choice a choice function makes" and "not being able to construct it" are really the same thing.

xen0··on An intutive counterexample to the axiom of choice
That would let me derive your mother's phone number. https://xkcd.com/704/

It's different because there's nothing that says such a choice function _cannot_ exist (short of an axiom that says explicitly so).

xen0··on An intutive counterexample to the axiom of choice
> But that set must have a member whose value is closest to zero.

Must it?

"Let x be the smallest element of the half-open interval (0, 1]" isn't really something that you can say *.

* Assuming the standard ordering of reals; sure you can say it's defined for some well-order, but then you require the Axiom of Choice anyway.

xen0··on An intutive counterexample to the axiom of choice
The OP's argument seems to be just that you cannot always construct a choice function.

But the entire point of the axiom of choice is to say "that's fine; you're still allowed to use 'unconstructed' choice functions in your proofs".

Would the OP reject the statement "let x be an element of the set of numbers that cannot be defined with finitely many symbols"; such a statement does not depend on the AoC, but I think the OP complains about making even a single choice.

xen0··on Google combines Maps and Waze teams in restructuring move
> they will move their money if Google doesn't do what they say - namely cut costs etc...

Why would Google care? This fund owns Google stock; it isn't giving money to Google, it gave money to whoever it bought that stock from.

Selling a fraction of a percent of the total in the market might move the stock price a little, but probably not much.

'Moving their money' just means transferring that stock to someone else who may have more faith in the company's strategy.

xen0··on A Reader Asks How to Avoid Working for Evil
I used to work for a non-profit scientific research facility. That was 6 years of definite 'not evil' work.

Maybe not impactful, but not evil.

Now I work for a big tech company. Maybe it's evil, but if that's true, at least evil pays better.

xen0··on Twitter misses payroll in Germany and the UK
Even in Germany, the 28th November 2022 was a Monday.

Source: writing from Germany on Tuesday the 29th.

xen0··on Hard Reset
There is a material change in comp when a 'growth stock' stops growing.
xen0··on Gmail 2FA causes the homeless to permanently lose access 3 times a year
There is a huge disconnect between two types of companies.

The majority of companies seem to view email addresses and phone numbers as largely permanent identifiers.

Then there are the companies that actually provide you those things. To them, what they provide you is definitely not permanent.

xen0··on Texas bans 10 banks, 348 investment funds over fossil fuel policies
Deutsche Bank is fined with some degree of regularity (yes, even in Europe).
xen0··on What Is Pozidriv? How Does It Differ from a Phillips Drive? (2020)
Now I think about it, that is actually weakness; it's really easy to use the wrong sized bit. Too small a bit works, until it starts stripping your screw head.
xen0··on Robertson vs. Torx screw drives (2021)
A little harsh to call an intentional compromise 'a failure'.

A feature is that pozi is compatible with Phillips bits, just without its advantages.

For people with older or smaller toolkits, that's actually quite helpful.

xen0··on YouTube removes criticism of dangerous fractal wood burning, but leaves up tips
This is a false equivalence.

When crossing the street, other people in cars don't want to actually kill you, and those crossing are generally aware and cognizant of the danger. The biggest mistake you can make is 'forgetting to look before crossing'; a lot of the time that won't kill you.

The setup here is very different.

The voltages involved in the wood burning process is far outside of most people's familiarity; your intuition for electricity just doesn't apply.

We're not just talking 'mains supply can be dangerous'; electricians routinely work on switches and such without bothering to shut off the circuit (even though this is typically ill-advised). Mistakes with mains, whilst they _can_ kill, usually just result in big bangs and breakers being tripped.

What you think 'protects' you just doesn't; your insulating gloves, shoes, wire covers, even air gaps; they could just fail you, and badly.

Even aware of this, knowing 'touching the probes kills me', a tiny mistake, such as 'brushing my insulated leg on the piece of wood I am working on, easily made despite being careful, has a very high chance of instantly killing you.

The only way I could see to make this process 'safe' is to not be in the same room as the equipment when it's connected to the power.

xen0··on DeWitt Clause, or can you benchmark %database% and get away with it
> Surprising that this isn't a business model for an overseas technology analyst firm.

How much are you willing to pay for a legally dubious benchmark?

xen0··on Google Interview Warmup
Most of my interview prep when I was last looking for a job was basically how to handle these type of questions. It took me a while, but I ended up with a lot of notes describing my past experiences. That way there was no memory test; all the hard work had been done.

I really recommend preparing for them; think hard about your projects, things you've done, why you did what you did, and so on. If you need prompts, I found Amazon's leadership principles (cringy though they may be) to be a good starting point. In fact, having prepared for Amazon's, everyone else's was easy.

Now I ask these questions and it's super obvious when people haven't prepared for them. I feel bad sometimes. I personally prefer them to the hypotheticals, but people do tend to freeze up.

xen0··on Science needs more research software engineers
Depending on the definition of RSE, I may or may not have been one. The company I worked for was a Synchrotron Light Source; I worked on software for data collection on X-Ray beamlines. I would say that only about half of those in the same role as me had a PhD.

Moving away from data collection to analysis, the fraction of PhDs went up, but only reached 1.0 when considering the sub-group specialising in structural biology.

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