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soreal

Re:NASA: High Performance Fast Computing Challenge on Thursday May 04, 2017 @05:17PM (#14268914)
They're giving you a chance to win $15k and all it takes is delivering a 1000x speedup improvement to software that runs on a 250k CPU cluster?

I'll pass, but hopefully someone else can do this as a labor of love.

Even if it was, you still pay regular income tax on stocks which are given to you.
Re:Ask HN: Taking a junior SWE job at around 7 years? on Wednesday April 19, 2017 @04:46PM (#14151615)
Agreed.

Also most companies won't give you honest feedback on what you did wrong in the interview, especially w.r.t. soft skills.

Join an interview prep class or mock interview workshop and try to get someone else to identify what you're weak on. It could pay off majorly and help land your dream job.

I checked the table you linked and:

Apple: 38 Banana: 51 Pineapple: 66 Watermelon: 72

vs.

Ice Cream (premium): 37 Sponge Cake: 46 Frosted Flakes: 55 Snicker's Bar: 55

Fruits really are very high GI compared to regular snack foods. They're relatively healthy for other reasons though.

For me, coding simple games was extremely valuable.

First, you can publish them as apps, which is fantastic for resume building. But also its the best way I've found to practice all the algorithms you'll eventually be asked to implement in coding interviews.

Re:Don’t Sign That Non-Disclosure Agreement Yet on Tuesday November 29, 2016 @06:14PM (#13067021)
IANAL and this is not legal advice

But yes, generally the terms of a work-for-hire contract specify an exchange of money in return for the work

However, most NDAs are completely independent of getting paid. Thus the author's advice to sign the main contract but leave off the NDA.

Facebook ads: spent $1000, got 20 clicks and 0 sales

Is that for real? Is everyone else's experience with Facebook advertising similar?

Re:I, Pencil (1958) on Tuesday November 22, 2016 @05:43PM (#13018358)
I think you're misunderstanding the meaning of 'stack' in "full-stack".

The 'stack' in full-stack refers to a solution stack. You can read about them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution_stack

The terminology full-stack is meaningful to discern between an expert at one part of the stack and someone who knows how to set up and manage all parts of the stack. For example, consider the LAMP stack:

Linux Apache MySql PHP

A Full-Stack developer is someone who knows enough Linux to set up an Apache server and MySql database, enough MySql to create a database, enough PHP to render a decent web page.

On the other hand, a frontend developer knows the gritty details about how to render a beautiful and performant webpage that works on IE6, iPhones on 2G and your 4k monitor.

I know it sounds far-fetched, but if someone develops a technology that can rapidly grow a wood-like material out of atmospheric carbon in such a way that entire buildings can be grown in single digit years, we could start seeing countries fighting over who is using too much CO2 and consuming too little
See, this is the thing about population studies.

1. Millions of people live their life 2. Academics put people into buckets in order to count them 3. Other academics group that data and label those people 4. Even more other academics come along and do more groupings then write a paper. 5. A newspaper writes an article with a catchy headline and an out-of-context image with arrows drawn on it to call your attention to one correlation but not others, then proceeds to use that data to make arguments that don't actually follow

At every step along the way, a biased researcher or newspaper makes assumptions, discards outliers, and labels individuals in such a way that if we focus on their chosen pivot, we see what they want us to see.

Longitudinal studies, machine learning, and more are all improvements on the current shaky process. I just hope they continue to catch on despite being tougher to do.

If this is true, I suspect (anecdotally) that it is only true for solving small problems that don't require serious thought, patience or diligence.

In that experiment, the problems required 10-15 seconds of thought to solve.

Programming well can take 10-15 minutes just to rebuild a fresh mental model of the system you're working on.

It even mentions that drinking boosts creativity but not working memory. Coding is far more dependent on working memory than creativity.

Re:Shame on Y Combinator on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @05:58PM (#12739110)
This thread really reinforces my respect for Altman and others like him. Of the 1,000 or so comments in this thread, hardly anyone managed to capture this simple, yet profound concept as well as Sam.

If Trump is bad, he's a symptom more than a disease. Shunning Republicans isn't going to change their mind, it's going to drive them to echo chambers like /r/the_donald where they will have their beliefs reinforced, not challenged.

Re:Atmospheric carbon dioxide passes 400ppm on Thursday September 29, 2016 @05:05PM (#12608755)
Permanently*

*Until we act to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere through various carbon capture methods

Re:Why NYC Rent Is So High (It’s Not Airbnb) on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @01:44PM (#12123348)
Well, the assessment in NYC, unlike other places is actually pretty predictable and transparent, but not simple.

If you are Class 1, it is 6% of FMV If you are Class 2+ it is 45% of FMV

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/finance/taxes/definitions-of-prope...

The authors calls out: [Important note: here we are not using the term “confidence” in the technical sense used in statistics, but rather as an informal term for “subjective probability”.]

But then goes on to use a very technical, statistical version of confidence where 0% confidence is somehow equal to 100% confidence you picked the wrong answer.

All of this leads me to assert that despite the math being internally consistent, it does not apply well to the situation. A rational outside observer without reading such an article would assume that 0% confidence in your answer is equal to a 50% chance of being right.

The phrase "confidence that the answer is 'true'" can easily be interpreted as "confidence that the answer I marked is correct".