haylem

I agree it's frustrating - and I've been on both sides of that fence - but still... it always puzzles me when someone seems to get worked up over the fact they didn't seem to get the callback they expected even though they had been told they were probably good enough. Why do people simply forget about the possibility that someone even better showed up right after them and got the spot instead, and rightfully so? It doesn't (necessarily) mean you were bad, or that they lied to you, or anything of the sort. It might just mean they had other candidates who fared even better.

Also, in these cases, I'd recommend you simply call back yourself. Think of it as the opposite of the judicial system (for the US and most of Europe, at least): the burden of proof is on the prosecution. In this case, it's on the job-seeker. You're the one who has to show you want the job and that you're the best fit. The company's role is to find a good fit (and to do so by using their resources in a reasonable way).

That being said, I wouldn't advise on doing "homework" assignments that are exceedingly long.

For the record, when I am on the recruiting side of the fence, I always do a phone screening first, with live coding in a shared editor. Only then might remote homework or on site coding come up, and I always tried to make sure the effort is minimal. It's hard to find something that fits all people and minds though. Try to design a recruiting scheme, and let me know how it works out and if it doesn't piss anyone off. :)

The courtesy thing is another issue entirely, of course, and obviously a lot less defendable...

Thanks for pointing it out. When I reached the homepage late last night, honestly I wasn't going to give it much thought.

The code snippet seemed uninteresting and to lack anything original, the pitch wasn't really selling much, and to top it off there were some text blurbs that seemed unfinished.

Then I saw your comment and read the tutorial. This was actually a pretty interesting read, even without actually following along in a console.

I find it assumes a bit too much so I don't think a total beginner would like it, but for someone used to toying around with new languages it's very well presented I think.

This is pretty awesome!

Just one thought though... The starter screen is a bit complicated. (Talking only about the web version, haven't tried the phone apps)

I was just thinking my parents would love this game as Klondike and FreeCell are pretty much bare requirements when they buy a new computer or when I set one up for them. And your game works great, looks good and has all these variants. Except... They wouldn't have a clue which one to pick!

I don't know what would be the best way to show case the games for selecting them. A carousel showing an animation with each of them? Or a preview split screen that shows that animation when you hover on one? Or directly small animations for each button?

No clue, but if you can find a way to make it easier (and to then pin your "favorite" games alongside the "popular" picks) you've got yourself a super winner.

Most evil-feeling OS experience ever. Impressive, if only for that.

The French company behind XWiki did something like this called eXoplatform [1] and WebOS more than 10 years ago. Can't put my finger on screenshots or videos now but they must be lying around.

Still impressive, especially with the smaller footprint, but not exactly revolutionary or novel.

There was a time where every company wanted their own portlet framework and implement windowing in their apps (for better or, most of the time, way worse). Bunch of frameworks allowed to do that more or less easily too: ExtJS, GWT, Rialto...

[1] https://www.exoplatform.com/

This will be an unlikely HN entry, but as there was not pre-requirement, I thoroughly enjoyed a French book named "Peste et Cholera" by Patrick Deville, about Alexandre Yersin [1]. Yersin is mostly known for identified the bacillus responsible for the plague [2]. Not that it relates to our field, but the guy's dedication and hard-work was inspiring (similarly, Pasteur's life is quite interesting to read about).

Also out of our usual targets here, though somewhat more related, I enjoyed "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" [3] by Haruki Murakami. I found the universes interesting and enjoyed the setting of a world were programmers learn to compute and encrypt things in their brains (even if it's a small part of the story).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Yersin

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yersinia_pestis

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard-Boiled_Wonderland_and_the...

People's ability to accept and even enjoy being bored.

Related: People's ability to accept they cannot - and should not and do not deserve to - get everything right now.

It might be easy in some case to mistake "sloppy" for "pioneering". It's harder to defend yourself and cover your tracks when you're one of the firsts to actually have been there and done that.

I think the notable thing about Mitnick was just this: he became notable. He put these activities on the radar of the law enforcement and of the media when they weren't all that much concerned about it.

I don't remember this being an issue. Maybe you are thinking of ExtGWT (now GXT)?

If I recall, the problem was more about ExtJS using overly complicated DOM structures to build its widgets than about the barebones GWT components themselves.

I'm not sure I would consider it on the rise or a recent trend, considering we had a all sorts of these things over the past 6-7 years already (and more, if you include other JVM languages in the mix).

It sure is nice to see a bit of competition though. But I'm a bit afraid of too much fragmentation and proliferation, when sometimes fixing or improving good frameworks might be time better spent. It was (and still is) a bit annoying when every week brings about a dozen new web frameworks, a new UI toolkit, a new stack acronym, etc...

Oh well... I guess you can't really tell what's time well spent, and you can't really product how frameworks will compete and improve evolutionarily.

Indeed. I studied in China for a year (in 2005) and I remember that amongst the recommendations for travelers, one was to avoid showing your travel guides - or at least the maps - as most would raise eyebrows. I remember covering Taiwan on the map with my hand a few times when asking other college students about recommendations for holiday travels, so they wouldn't pick up on it.

On the other hand, it's not like it was grounds for paranoia either: that was usually a good conversation starter on the train. There's a wide disconnect between what the government says it will enforce, what it actually enforces, and what people actually think.

You could get into some weird conversations, but I generally did not come across much animosity because of these maps. Awkwardness, at worst. If there was any, you'd simply back out and apologize for the map being inaccurate.

Well there's quite a lot of research going into creating anti-venoms for stuff that kill only a (relative) few per year.

For instance, see: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-34513177 (which I may have come across from HN actually)

Note that they talk about 13 recorded deaths and none since the program began, but consider the effort involved.

And we do get pretty crazy about sharks and stuff when they kill less than a handful per year worldwide.

Interesting. Not wanting to put words in your mouth, but that sounds like trying to impose a vegan lifestyle (for the record: I'm vegetarian and mostly vegan now) to the animal kingdom.

I can understand part of the sentiment, but I'm a bit cautious of 1) the possibility of that happening 2) the impacts 3) the ethics.

You could be right, but on the other hand you see to rely only on assumptions as to what comes from the genetics of each species and which bits are going to be retained.

It's not like Dingos in Australia are extremely dangerous for instance. Sure they still are to an extent, like most animals living in the wild, but it's not better or worse in terms of behavior than any other wild animal.

Representative sample concerns aside... I've had one for 2 years and am still very actively using it and considering chromeboxes to replace aging PCs at my place and for some of my relatives (come being on the tech illiterate side of the spectrum, while others ran IT departments in their days). I use it for my kids (3 and 6 yo at the moment) and they use it way more than the tablets (not useful enough for them) or the "real" PCs (yet too unapproachable for them without supervision except for basic workflows).

It's not my "main" computer though, but that was never the problem raised in this thread. The fact is, chromebooks and Chrom{e,ium}OS are very decent platforms for all kinds of users, and they are indeed pretty safe to run. And I often do as others said: I ssh from the chromebook to my other PCs in other rooms, or remote servers, etc...

It's also a great device when travelling if you have a 4G phone providing connectivity or you stop in hotels or conferences with WiFi (I wonder if there's been attempts to bring one to a DefCon or pwn conference to see how it holds... haven't checked).

Sure I find that it hads plenty of shortcomings. But most of them are stuff that are shortcomings for me, professional CS/IT dev/tester/consultant/trainer/teacher/etc... Lots of other user groups will also probably fine shortcomings (like the "elderly" person mentioned requiring Quicken), but it doesn't mean you can't work around the issue (substitute it, use quicken from another machine, etc...).

It surely isn't all-purpose or perfect, but it's still great.

I wholeheartedly agree that I'd be deeply sad to see it sank, way more than I'd have been to see it merged the other way around.

That being said, as recently Android Apps were starting to be available on ChromeOS via the Chrome Web Store and worked decently for the most part, I'm curious to see what the actual integration/folding will be. Because it may be largely marketing-oriented to make Android the prominent part (or just the prominent brand) as it's way more popular in terms of user and device share (billions vs probably a few millions, if even that).

EDIT: And Pichai's quote does not worry me too much until I see something happening: "mobile as a computing paradigm is eventually going to blend with what we think of as desktop today."

In fact, the article seems mostly unsubstantiated, so as long as I don't see an announcement from Google I think I'm not letting go of my chromebook and ChromeOS. :)

Right, I didn't word that part very well indeed. You still have to retain the original license in any case but it only covers that particular bit of code. Any product you create built on a MIT component can be licensed as you pleased.

It depends what was meant by derivative and how this impacts the original code (encapsulated, modified, etc...). I was thinking more of when you use an MIT-licensed lib or 3rd party tool, or when you would reuse a code-snippet licensed as MIT and modify it. License and attributions remain, but only for that part of the code.

Derivatives absolutely don't have to be MIT as well. MIT/X11 is not viral. It only requires attribution, but you are free to modify, redistribute and even commercialize as you like, and to re-license your derivative work, as long as you simply give attribution for the original work.

But it doesn't mean "claim it as your own", as long as it's not significantly altered.

OP's link is for a draft version. Final version can be found in several places (e.g. Google Scholar). Here's one of them: http://dspace.mit.edu/openaccess-disseminate/1721.1/75360

Sure, but I think what ckozlowski was saying is that even though these particular users may have no value in themselves and their (lack of) discourse, they bring attention of other well-mannered users that then get into intelligent discourse.

Trolls are a bit like political extremists: if they weren't here, you wouldn't talk about the ugly stuff so much and make sure it's kept in check.

I remember the whole debate over Go's naming very well.

There was even at some point a request to rename the language "Issue9" after this thread :)

I supposed it resurged now because of the migration from code.google.com to github.com.

See the original ticket here: https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9

I suppose comment 42 (you can't make that stuff up...) is the one that sparked the issue for renaming it "Issue 9".

I don't know... They interviewed me 5 times, and I don't mind so much. It's a bit frustrating, but I can understand why.

Sure there were a few cases of "oops, didn't realize we interviewed you already" and I'm sure there are cases of "we just don't like you as a person". But I'm pretty sure overall, with Google and most companies, the reason was just "you just weren't good enough compared to our other current candidates." And that's OK.

The fact that they re-interview someone they dismiss is a good thing. The fact that they re-interview N times a person they've dismissed N-1 times is just unfortunate and makes it more visible, but it's not in itself a malevolent thing. Maybe it'd be best if they didn't re-interview at all because it makes them look bad (after all, chances are higher they'll reject you again if they already did). But I guess I prefer the view that they don't want to pass on someone that might have improved, or someone that they might have dismissed for the wrong reasons the first time. And I see that as rather positive.

I personally re-interviewed some people multiple times - and both people I had rejected before and people I had approved but who denied or who got hired but then left and decided to come back. It doesn't struck me as a bad thing to re-assess people based on your current needs and your current workforce. You just have not to be a jerk about it.

I'm sure not everybody shares that view though.

It's not a great analogy indeed.

However, you also don't provide much proof that "surveillance is an essential tool in fighting crime". Its efficiency to deter/prevent crime, or even to help catch offenders a posteriori, is also highly debatable (I guess it's more likely to be helpful for the latter, but that still makes the definition of "fighting crime" rather vague as well).

For kicks, I like this paper on how street-lighting and CCTV cameras are apparently equally efficient as deterrent: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-9133.2004.... .

In the case of digital surveillance, I'd be extremely cautious about its actual efficiency. And that something is legal and efficient doesn't necessarily warrant that its ethical and should be used.

I had a few in mind when I was back in uni and hosting and cloud storage prices were still up.

I hadn't thought of reddit, as the abuse would be clearly visible, but I had used back then that Gmail Drive some guy had implemented using emails for storage, and it led me to think a lot of the Google Systems had non-obvious "unlimited" storage options.

For instance, I don't know if that's still the case, but Google Calendar surely seemed pretty fit for abuse: while calendar entries were limited in size, you could have as many as you wanted. And calendars can be private, so it's even better.

The problem with such systems will be the integrity of your data, when you start being forced to chunk things up. If they change one thing under your feet, you're a bit screwed. Also you have to detect all the undocumented pitfalls (e.g. forbidden characters in an edit field).

Hmm, true, it's mentioned in first paragraph, but I couldn't find it in the rest of the article's body when I came back to it. Well, this is rather bad then...

Well, you know what, I actually realized that there's no timing info in the recorded data. So, no problem. I jumped the gun quite a bit.

Still, a bit worrysome, because it could easily be modified to track it. And for all we know, some sites could be doing that. Facebook was (at least at some point) listening to what you were typing in timeline posts even if you didn't actually decide to send them, so it wouldn't be surprising if some sites did that sort of stuff.

Interesting project idea...

I think you've got it confused with some implementations of EtherPad. At least I know I've seen it there, but I don't recall seeing it in Google Docs.

Fine, there's the worry you typed in something sensitive in the document. But it's far from being the major worry here, if I understood everything correctly...

Basically, if you have all keystrokes with timing info, you've got all the keystroke dynamics required to establish an individual's biometric keystroke fingerprint. And that seems freaking scary to me, for a few reasons.

1) Impersonation

Anyone can grab that fingerprint from any shared file on Google Docs and then feed it to a program so that you can impersonate the author for various purposes... Be it typing a blog comment (harmless), or something more insidious like logging into a secure system using that type of auth system.

Another trivial example could be impersonating someone on a Coursera course, where they use such fingerprints for identification on paid / "signature track" courses, which allow you to get a verified certificate from a known university. They use a photo, but that can also be fed by a tweaked webcam driver. So there you have it, you can hire someone to take lessons and pass exams for you. Or fail you.

2) Anonymity

Anyone with access to a shared google doc can now get your fingerprint, and if they implement a similar record on another website, they can identify who you are. Maybe such fingerprints are not 100% unique, but they surely can be accurate enough to pick you from a crowd of anonymous commenters on a website, for instance.

You could also imagine that a software you already have installed could identify you using a similar approach.

In that case, surfing using a Tails/Tor VM and in the incognito mode of your browser won't help you that much.

I'm sure in a perfect world this could sound awesome: no logins required anywhere, just type in stuff and get automatically ID-ed and credited for what you type and say. In our world, that could be bad for some people.

Plus I can only imagine how bad that would be if companies started to include in their web and desktop apps EULA that you agree to share keystroke dynamics with them and that you auhtorize them to redistribute it to partners. BAM, a global commercial database of uniquely identified users, no matter what account or throwaway email they use. Forget cookies and stuff, that won't need that anymore.

Bit far-fetched of course, as that would require some effort. But it's not that much effort that it wouldn't be interesting enough for someone to do it...