Hacker News: tutufan

New comment by tutufan in "How to Get Hired at CircleCI"

tutufan — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 18:20:07 +0000

Just nope out of the whiteboard interviews. There are lots of places that need you that don't do them.

New comment by tutufan in "How to Get Hired at CircleCI"

tutufan — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 18:02:37 +0000

"The fundamentals" can cover an immense amount of ground, especially if you're old enough to have worked in a lot of different sub-fields.

New comment by tutufan in "Catfish Programmers"

tutufan — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 01:06:22 +0000

Plot twist: We're all catfish programmers...

New comment by tutufan in "If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it"

tutufan — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 22:14:16 +0000

Linear time suffix tree construction. You have 90 seconds. Go!

:-P

New comment by tutufan in "New features you can't use unless you are in Python 3"

tutufan — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 18:51:16 +0000

Of those, only the async I/O stuff seems compelling. But compelling it is, at least as used in Curio. It feels like this is still shaking out, with the standard library and Trio (?) alternatives, but it looks really cool.

New comment by tutufan in "Is the keyboard faster than the mouse?"

tutufan — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 16:42:00 +0000

Spent some time on this a while back, and even wrote a driver that let me use a game controller as a complete replacement for my keyboard and mouse. Interesting but not really successful.

One key takeaway: The input bitrate that a competent typist can get from a keyboard is quite high. As a guess, it might be 8x higher than with a gamepad or mouse.

And as an additional detail, I've had more RSI issues with mice than keyboards over the years, even though I use emacs.

New comment by tutufan in "Don't publicly expose .git (2015)"

tutufan — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 19:14:53 +0000

Rationale for "make install" rediscovered. Film at 11... :-)

New comment by tutufan in "Vegetarian Diets May Be More Effective for Weight Loss Than Restricting Calories"

tutufan — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 19:02:41 +0000

It could well turn out that the common factor here is not consuming a lot of highly refined carbohydrates (sugar, flour, etc.).

More importantly, metabolism is just incredibly complicated, with many complex relationships and effects. On top of that, there is significant genetic variation, so these will differ across individuals. For now, we pretty much have to experiment on ourselves and observe what works.

New comment by tutufan in "Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax"

tutufan — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 18:53:09 +0000

Breitbart and The Nation both have a rather dramatic skew. But, since it's obvious and generally consistent, it's relatively easy to "null out". This leaves you with additional signals that are still relatively uncorrelated with (say) the NYT signal. This can provide additional information, and sometimes it leads by several days or even weeks, which is interesting.

(If I had a source of future stock price deltas that was almost always "wrong", I could be a very rich man.)

That said, I've personally come to the realization that my marginal hour spent reading daily news is generally better spent reading ancient philosophy. News is certainly addictive, but I'd be hard pressed to come up with examples where it's improved my life.

New comment by tutufan in "Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax"

tutufan — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 18:44:13 +0000

Overt opinion is pretty easy to spot. Subtle "editorials" in the form of omissions, slanted word choice, etc., are harder, esp until you start looking carefully for them.

New comment by tutufan in "Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax"

tutufan — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 05:26:47 +0000

Try breitbart and thenation as alternatives, for example. Sure, some of it's drivel, but after a while you'll realize that some of the NYT is drivel as well.

And actually, if you just carefully compare NYT _headlines_ to their corresponding _articles_, you'll realize that the headlines really are pretty crappy. Certainly nowhere near the standards for headline writing we used to have in ninth grade journalism class.

I really hope to see a resurgence of classical quality journalism. But I'm not optimistic.

New comment by tutufan in "Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax"

tutufan — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 19:29:33 +0000

If you think the NYT is unbiased, you might do well to read a few alternative sources for a while to compare and contrast. Once you've been to other lands, it's easier to spot the oddities of one's usual locale.

But more importantly, even if the NYT were entirely unbiased, that does not mean that it's good for your mental state to be reading it. Being exposed to a lot of problems that you cannot do anything about might not be a good thing.

New comment by tutufan in "Whiteboard Interviews Suck, Get Good at Them Anyway"

tutufan — Thu, 08 Jun 2017 19:50:06 +0000

If you select stringently for WBI ability, you'll get strong WBIers. However, you're also paying the opportunity cost of not selecting for other traits and skills that might matter a lot more.

+1 though for "Senior Whiteboard Engineer"--that term is genius!

New comment by tutufan in "“Let her speak please”"

tutufan — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 17:38:12 +0000

"Informal study"? Isn't that an oxymoron?

New comment by tutufan in "Whiteboard Interviews Suck, Get Good at Them Anyway"

tutufan — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 22:58:54 +0000

Conversation, half technical and half to figure out what the person would be like to work with. For example, tell me about the most interesting/difficult/satisfying problem was that you've worked on. Or, tell me what happens when you point your browser at a web site, in as much detail as you can muster. What are your go-to tools to solve problems

New comment by tutufan in "Whiteboard Interviews Suck, Get Good at Them Anyway"

tutufan — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 19:38:02 +0000

There is kind of a symmetry to it. Get a question that the asker has studied and watch the answerer squirm. Seems like it'd be more fun, and probably more insightful, to take turns... :-)

New comment by tutufan in "On average, skipping college and investing tuition costs nets a higher return"

tutufan — Mon, 05 Jun 2017 18:17:56 +0000

Possibly true, but I cannot think of a worse occupation to get into right now, with self-driving trucks on the horizon.

(Also, I have a trucker in the family, and the financials are harder than they look.)

New comment by tutufan in "Ask HN: Books you wish you had read earlier?"

tutufan — Sun, 04 Jun 2017 23:51:09 +0000

Haven't read this specifically, but agree with the concept. Also recommend The Psychopath Code by Pieter Hintjens (the ZMQ guy). Most books are ultimately quite abstract. A few are useful when the shit really hits the fan.

New comment by tutufan in "The Pleasures of Pessimism"

tutufan — Wed, 31 May 2017 18:48:29 +0000

I ran across this "book" recently as was impressed by how deep it was, compared to the vision presented in Sunday School (and a certain 60s pop song).

It's a bit hard to read. Start here: https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/o/old-testament-of-th...

New comment by tutufan in "At what age does ageism start to affect opportunities for software engineers?"

tutufan — Tue, 30 May 2017 17:09:20 +0000

At a societal level, I'd prefer that companies didn't act irrationally. (I don't believe in justice per se.)

But at an individual level, you have to play the cards you are dealt. There is a huge amount of noise in the system, but play them as well as you can.