Hacker News Reader

justfor1commenton How can I drink a bubble tea to ensure that I don’t finish the tea before bobas?

I am almost certain this is going to be an interview question at one of the FANGs within a week.

justfor1commenton Tencent's AI plays StarCraft II, and wins over 90 percent of the time

  > Because Starcraft is 1v1 and LoL is 5v5
  Starcraft can also be played 5v5
  > Also because Starcraft has three races, i. e. 9 matchups
  But each race has 20 different units. The units are more 
  similar to LOL champions than the races. There are also a 
  tonne of different buildings and upgrades to choose from.
  LOL is very similar to DOTA and given that OpenAI already 
  beat *human* players in DOTA, LOL is not that farfetched. The 
  current work, although impressive, still cannot beat *human* 
  players in SC2. The complexity of designing AI for a game 
  depends heavily on the branching factor of decision in the 
  game. SC2 has a much higher branching factor than LOL or any 
  other games played by n00bs.

justfor1commenton Tencent's AI plays StarCraft II, and wins over 90 percent of the time

I play SC2 as well as work on AI/ML during my day job. The state of AI is extremely hyped by the media. The most sophisticated neural networks I have seen so far are recommender systems. The algorithm that predicts which next movie on Netflix you might be interested in based on your history of completed and abandoned movies. However, for all such systems there is a precise way to measure the effectiveness of the AI and improve it by doing A/B testing etc. Main problem with SC2 and AI is there isn't a good heuristic to measure your progress at any point of time. Eg: If player 1 has 25 reapers and player 2 has 8 void rays who is ahead? Well the void rays could destroy all barracks and win or the Terran player might make a few marines and missile turrets to counter the void rays while attacking probes with reapers. Basically, if you pause an SC2 game at any point of time(barring last 2 minutes) you cannot predict the winner with 100% accuracy. This is a big problem for designing an effective AI for SC2.

justfor1commenton Artificial Intelligence Threatens Jobs in Developing World

The underlying assumption in the article is that even after the AI-Automation revolution people will still want jobs. A good chunk of the population might just be happy when their basic needs of food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, etc are met by automated factories and services. It is possible to create this supply meets demand world at zero recurring costs.

justfor1commenton Dark Motives and Elective Use of Brainteaser Interview Questions

To account for some interviewers being sadist in general, may be companies can implement a per interviewer rejection quota. For example, if you interview 10 candidates at max you can reject 7 candidates. You have to yes to 3 candidates or be removed from the interviewing committee. This will ensure that just one bitter person is not preventing good candidates from clearing the interview process.

justfor1commenton Giant plastic catcher heads for Pacific Ocean clean-up

The question isn't whether we should spend money on ocean cleanup vs doing nothing. The question is whether we should give money to "The Ocean Cleanup project" or spend it on more promising research. A glitzy looking project can steal the funding from other equally promising but less glamorous initiatives.

justfor1commenton Giant plastic catcher heads for Pacific Ocean clean-up

Ideal scalable solution to the problem: Engineering a bacteria that feeds off of plastic and can only survive in saline water. The proposed solution in this article only touches the surface of the problem, literally. Even if it pans out, the surface of the ocean will be clean and may lead to the wrong conclusion that the ocean is rid of plastic.

justfor1commenton Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

Amazon health insurance is already happening: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/30/amazon-berkshire-hathaway-an...

justfor1commenton Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

Services you run on AWS are isolated from Amazon. It is part of their legal agreement. This is important so that businesses can store sensitive data on AWS without worrying about Amazon using this data for their own use cases.

justfor1commenton Mutiny at the big five is part of the future of work

A big chunk of bay area tech workers are on the H1B visa. If they get fired, they might have to go back to their home countries. They simply cannot take the risk of losing their job (almost a $100K downside) for the chance of 10% salary increase ($10K upside).

justfor1commenton Google and Mastercard Cut Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

Google: free, credit card: 20% APR, human right to privacy: priceless. There are some things money can't buy, for everything else there's Mastercard.

justfor1commenton Convincing engineers to join your team

This may be obvious to the candidates but it isn't that obvious to startups. I have seen startups that ask the same interview questions asked at FB. Why would anyone who can solve these questions join your loss making startup? IMO startups should scale the difficulty of their interview process with the liquid compensation they are willing to offer. Also, reduce the number of steps in the interview, especially for experienced candidates. Make the process smooth and effortless for the candidate. That's something FB and Goog cannot do at their scale.

justfor1commenton Uber 'to focus on bikes over cars'

China already tried this and this is the outcome: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/25/chinas-bike-... US cities are predominantly designed around cars. More so than China. Don't see how Uber can succeed with this initiative.

justfor1commenton Nobody Trusts Facebook, Twitter Is a Hot Mess, What Is Snapchat Doing?

> MZ is trying to do the right thing, overall. But results matter. If I am trying really hard not to kill people but inadvertently kill a few while providing employment for thousands of soldiers, won't a judge completely ignore that good side of me when sentencing? This is why we need laws and regulations to prevent FB from inadvertently killing democracy.

justfor1commenton Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

Now it's my personal goal to have a score of zero on FB.

justfor1commenton Launch HN: The Buttermilk Company (YC S18) – Homemade Indian Food in 5 Minutes

You just defined the concept of a masala. A masala is a mixture of dry spices in the correct ratio for a recipe. You can find them at an Indian store. I have also seen them at Target or on Amazon. The recipe for cooking is on the back side of a masala packet. Here is a link to a popular brand of masalas: http://www.everestspices.com/products