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Comment There's lots of things to be afraid of (Score 1) 294

I am as afraid of AI as I am of malevolent alien life coming to destroy us. It's possible. It's far more possible that I will get ebola though, and I have zero fear of that. It's really really possible that I will die in a car crash and that's not keeping me up at night.

Spiders though. they terrify me. The arachniphobia has me pinned down.

Comment This test is impossible and pointless. (Score 1) 522

On my team, there are as many Y chromosomes as X chromosomes. It's impossible to pass this test. In my almost 30 years of writing software, The only time there was more than 1 woman on my team was a year during the dotcom boom. Otherwise, if there is a woman, she's the only one. I didn't need this test to know that.

You don't need to come up with circuitous gimmicks to prove that there aren't a lot of women in tech. We know it. Everyone who has worked in this field knows it. Society knows it. The unknown here is why? can you come up with something that demonstrates brogrammer culture is scaring them off? can you show that kindergarten teachers discourage girls from interest in computers? can you show that hormones make women afraid of logic? can you come up with a test that shows that HR departments throw women's resumes in the trash so i never see them?

Comment Re:Here's MY test (Score 5, Interesting) 522

If you can substitute the term "white male" into your premise and suddenly find it offensive, then was actually racist/sexist all along.

"a project that passes the test must feature at least one function written by a white male developer, that calls a function written by another white male developer. "

i'm a white male and most of my projects don't pass. It's a joke i know, but it's a good metric in a way. Really, joking aside, to pass, a project should feature at least one function written by a developer that calls a function written by another developer. i'm aware that sadly, I don't work as well with others as i should. I often reinvent the wheel and isolate my codebases. From what i've seen, this is common.

Comment Re:Sooo .. (Score 1) 127

If your are carrying your unlocked phone, and you get mugged and hand over your phone, then the mugger now doesn't have to enter a passcode until he/she puts it down.

What phone does protect against this? AFAIK all phones will remain unlocked as long as you keep using them. If a mugger grabs any phone right out of your hand, they are going to have access to your email long enough to change key passwords and get all your info.

Comment surprised? (Score 4, Interesting) 232

ever notice how the products recommended for your car just happen to be made by the same company that made the car? Ever notice how the manual for your new hiking boots claims they will work best with the leather sealant made by the same company? Ever notice how the helpful recipes found on the packaging of food items happen to have ingredients that all come from the same food company? why would anybody expect anything different?

Comment Re:Not a stakeholder (Score 1) 451

I'm pretty sure it's all just posturing on both sides. The Uber CEO wanted to make it sound like Uber was all futuristic and stuff for investors. The Lyft ceo saw uber raise some hackles by supporting autonomous vehicles. He figures if he just takes the opposite stance maybe he can get some more drivers in his fleet. In the short term, that's a pretty valuable victory. Then, yeah, he can take his money and buy self driving cars.

Comment Re:Missing the point (Score 2) 155

I take it because I know how to pay for it. yellow cabs have weird habits of telling you after you get where you are going that they only take cash. sure, i can say, "well all if have is $5 cash so here you go." but honestly, planing for a confrontation at the end of every ride just isn't enjoyable.

Comment Re:Bwahahahahahahwahahahaah (Score 1) 529

Don't watches go in and out of style like everything else? I imagine there are circles that would shun you if you were walking around with your rolex from 3 years ago.

I don't know much about high end watches. I'll be honest, i can't tell a tag heurer from a breitling, To me, it looks like watch fashion has never changed so maybe a rolex never goes out of style.

I do remember a time, though, when everyone wore a swatch. up to 10 on each arm. fashion is a fickle thing and doesn't always drive people to make the sane choices.

Comment both? (Score 1) 407

I picked up objective-c when ios became big. it's fine and all, but what i find myself doing is writing as much as i can in c++ and then just calling into it from objective-c where i need to. xcode will happily compile the two languages (technically i'm using objective-c++). really, even in apple's apis objective-c only gets you so far. sooner or later you will find yourself calling into c apis. heck even some of their examples only feature a rough skeleton of objective-c working with a big c library.

my advice: learn enough objective c to make an NSView and handle some events, and send that stuff right into you c++ api asap.

Comment Re:So live underground (Score 2) 135

I think the biggest problem would be those on the mars days are here on earth and all the life around them is moving on the regular earth cycle... I can't have lunch at my favorite restaurant, go to the bank, etc... because my days are out of sync. Those people in the Arctic Circle are all on the same clock as businesses and everyone else around them.

i don't think it's going to be the martian day cycle that keeps the first people on Mars from getting to the bank or their favorite restaurant for lunch.

Comment Are you being too picky? (Score 1) 809

Are you just asking these candidates questions that are too specific?

My team asks candidates to solve some relatively simple problems. They don't have much to do with our software. It's just stuff like filtering strings for pairs of characters and some other stuff. It helps us to evaluate if someone can write code to solve a problem.

If they can, we will ask them more specific questions. Now, i'm a graphics programmer. I work with open gl and 3d stuff. I'll often ask, "Given a triangle with points A,B, and C, how would you find the normal?" I realize this community is going to contain lots of people who find that question laughably simplistic. it's not even a programming question (though neither is describing key pairs). I'm just looking for them to say "cross product". . nobody in 3 years has ever known.

the purpose of the question though isn't to shoot someone down. it's more like extra credit. I'm curious if they know anything about geometry, but we've hired plenty of guys who can't answer my questions. they have learned, and i was confident they could because they did well on the general questions.

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