Hacker News: w0mbat

New comment by w0mbat in "Show HN: Every problem and solution in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview"

w0mbat — Fri, 30 May 2025 16:39:04 +0000

It's not a static situation. The questions have changed, to the point where solving them in interview conditions is a separate skill. When I interviewed people at Google, I asked interesting but quite simple questions and they gave me all the information I needed. As a candidate doing interviews elsewhere I have often been asked questions that are way too complicated to actually solve in the time.

How we got to this point : as average candidates train more in interview-coding, the interviewers pick harder and harder questions. It's got to the point where the only way to reliably pass is to have pre-canned memorized solutions to hundreds of existing questions. It's an arms race divorced from the reality of the job, which is done with real world tasks, privacy, little time pressure, and access to reference materials.

New comment by w0mbat in "Show HN: Every problem and solution in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview"

w0mbat — Fri, 30 May 2025 16:16:17 +0000

I can't code with somebody looking over my shoulder. I need to relax and think about the task. They expect me to code while being judged by one or more strangers, against the clock, with high stakes involved. If that was the actual job I would not apply for it.

New comment by w0mbat in "Netflix buffering issues: Boxing fans complain about Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson"

w0mbat — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 19:40:41 +0000

Tyson was fighting Jake Paul, not Logan Paul. That’s Jake’s brother.

New comment by w0mbat in "Radius Full Page Display"

w0mbat — Thu, 09 May 2024 00:20:36 +0000

My Mac IIcx with Apple Portrait Display was a lovely system. Luckily most modern screens like my LG can be pivoted to vertical, and then the Mac lets you specify the rotation. There's no more need for vertical-only screens.

New comment by w0mbat in "Meta Horizon OS"

w0mbat — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 21:18:21 +0000

Otherwise known as Linux.

New comment by w0mbat in "The Angel, Islington"

w0mbat — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 00:32:09 +0000

This is the area where I grew up. The Angel is not just that corner, it's that whole neighborhood, although it is named after The Angel pub (which no longer exists). The Angel extends from the corner pictured, north to Islington Green, and includes the surrounding streets on either side.

Notably, Angel Tube Station actually moved in 1992, when London Transport opened a new station and entrance along the line, equipped with a long escalator, and they closed the old entrance around the corner which had a big lift. For some reason, Apple Maps stubbornly refuses to use the new location and marks the entrance on the wrong street. Google Maps gets it right.

New comment by w0mbat in "How the codpiece flopped"

w0mbat — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 01:59:53 +0000

I wonder how long the "pair of" phrasing can stick to things that were once a pair of items and got redesigned to be one thing, like trousers, or scissors (originally a pair of knives). My wife always says "scissor" singular, which I thought was weird but now think is the just way the language will go eventually.

How long can we stick with "hang up the phone" and "off the hook" now there is no separate handset and no hook or base? And finaly, why is it "a pair of underpants" when that could never have been two garments?

New comment by w0mbat in "ICJ orders Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, stops short of ordering ceasefire"

w0mbat — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 22:53:40 +0000

The ruling also ordered Hamas to release all hostages, and Hamas has previously claimed they would abide by any ruling of the court. I find it unlikely though that they will comply.

New comment by w0mbat in "Apple dials back car's self-driving features and delays launch to 2028"

w0mbat — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 21:16:20 +0000

Apple should buy one of the local EV companies like Lucid or Rivian, it would save them years of R&D on the hardware, give them valuable automotive guidance on the software and how things work in the car world. Lucid's software R&D is run by many ex-Apple people.

Also, I don't think self-driving is a must-have feature and I speak as the driver of a Tesla with full-self-driving. It's just not that useful. Traffic-aware safety features are more valuable and easier to achieve.

New comment by w0mbat in "The journey of the Roman gladius and other swords"

w0mbat — Sun, 07 Jan 2024 15:38:04 +0000

“Gladius” was also the common Roman slang word for “penis”, so much so that the accompanying Latin word for a sword holder or scabbard, “vagina”, became the standard English word for a body part, losing its original meaning.

New comment by w0mbat in "Costs of running a macOS app studio business"

w0mbat — Sun, 24 Dec 2023 21:01:49 +0000

The Apple app store is a disaster for making a living as an indie. People can't find the apps so sales are low, market rate prices are also low. The only way to make a living is to rip-off users with misleading subscriptions, which I won't do. I made much more money writing $20 shareware in the 90s.

That's why I write apps for a corporation now.

New comment by w0mbat in "FDA approves a CRISPR-based medicine for treatment of sickle cell disease"

w0mbat — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 19:38:33 +0000

The gene that causes sickle cell anaemia actually provides partial immunity to malaria, which is why this gene has not been bred out of the population over time.

New comment by w0mbat in "Calculator Construction Set"

w0mbat — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 00:38:38 +0000

I missed the old Mac calculator desk accessory so much I wrote a new version of it for current Macs (you can buy it if you want at CalculatorDA.com but I wrote it for my own nostalgia purposes and use it every day). Like the version Chris Espinosa handed to Steve Jobs it has lots of options for changing the look, but they are all modern choices, like jaggy versus anti-aliased, modern traffic light window controls vs old school close box, etc. I change up the settings depending on my mood.

New comment by w0mbat in "The Welsh Punk Scene of the 1980s"

w0mbat — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 16:44:51 +0000

“There are not a lot of photos of Icons of Filth. Apparently they encouraged people not to take them because there were animal products used in the processing of film.”

LOL I suppose film is technically an animal product, as it contains gelatin, normally obtained from boiled up cow bones. They didn’t kill the cows to make film though, it’s a byproduct. This is the first time I’ve seen anyone attack old-fashioned photography for not being vegan enough.

New comment by w0mbat in "It's My Monitor"

w0mbat — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 18:36:34 +0000

Although the user should have been polite, I totally understand being annoyed that the manual was intercepted and thrown out. Users who actually read manuals are like gold. They want to learn and they want to solve their own problems if they can.

New comment by w0mbat in "Kagi Small Web"

w0mbat — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 18:23:46 +0000

I find this kind of domain name reuse unsettling: for years, Kagi.com was the address of a payment service for shareware authors. Man those were the days. Lots of people were perfectly willing to pay me $20 for a useful little utility app and now they won't pay $2 in an App Store.

New comment by w0mbat in "Ask HN: Any LAN alternatives other than PowerLine or MOCA?"

w0mbat — Fri, 01 Sep 2023 18:49:33 +0000

If you pull new ethernet, make it cat 6 or better. Times change.

I'm not using ethernet beyond the switch room, I threw money at the problem and got a 3 pack of those wi-fi 6 Nest units which form a mesh network. Works fine, covers the house and front and back yards. Costco is selling a 4 pack of those for $450 which is even better. https://www.costco.com/google-nest-wifi-pro,-wi-fi-6e,-4-pac...

It'd be way cheaper to drill some holes and run ethernet in your situation though.

New comment by w0mbat in "Why does the USA use 110V and UK use 230-240V? (2014)"

w0mbat — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 19:16:40 +0000

It's really annoying as Japan has lots of wonderful vintage secondhand synthesizers for sale, but being domestic market models they often have non-switching power supplies that require 100 V.

New comment by w0mbat in "Amazon acquires Fig"

w0mbat — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 19:57:02 +0000

Except people just hearing about Fig now can't sign up.

New comment by w0mbat in "Amazon acquires Fig"

w0mbat — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 19:48:45 +0000

Acquihires generally get a better comp deal than hires, they just don't tend to make much off the acquisition deal unless they are high up. If their comp includes accelerated vesting rather than the terrible Amazon slowcoach vesting it could be decent.