FeatureRush's comments

FeatureRush | 8 years ago | on: Poland’s Central Bank Secretly Paid YouTubers to Slander Cryptos

Can confirm, this is mostly campaign to remind about risks so people make more informed decisions.

There was some other campaign couple moths ago that warned about "kryptowaluty i ich podróbki" that tried to target project advertising as cryptocurrencies that are just normal scams like OneCoin and clones (Dascoin etc). I've seen many people here in Poland falling for that.

Sure people make their own decisions, but for it to work there needs to be certain level of information available.

FeatureRush | 8 years ago | on: The impossibility of intelligence explosion

Isn't there a loophole in this argument - if we could only include "building specialized sub-AIs" in the set of problems our AI can solve? Is there any fundamental reason why this can't be done? I agree that there needs to be more subsystem in AI for 'learning' and 'improving' to even work.

Not really sure where I stand on the AI debate, surpassing humans at everything seems misguided to me, like why would you include all this human-like cruft in the AI when you can put in stuff humans could never have?

FeatureRush | 8 years ago | on: The two questions I ask every interviewer

Different answers probably give points to different traits the test measures, the ambiguity is just irritating for test takers coming from more classical tests where you know (or at least suspect) what is expected from you.

This whole test setup is not cheap so one can at least hope they considered the issue of diversity? The other thing is did they actually tested which teams perform better in specific problem domain that interests them?

FeatureRush | 8 years ago | on: The two questions I ask every interviewer

Apparently there are already companies that take it a step further. They test sample of their employees with some fancy IQ test that measures them across several dimensions. From those results profile of desirable new hire is build and all candidates get measured by the same test.

On reddit in threads about interviews I've already seen couple people discussing those strange tests where in many questions there are no obvious correct/wrong answers, like for example all presented shapes can in their own way fit in presented pattern.

FeatureRush | 8 years ago | on: 19th-Century Lithuanians Who Smuggled Books to Save Their Language

In the other parts of partitioned PLC similar fight for culture was happening. Sometimes I even think, that some barricades were purposefully installed in Polish culture so that it will win again. In school you learn about the importance of Polish, how it was suppressed and people who learned it in secret were heroes... In day-to-day life many people will oppose using English words when Polish can be used, I even witnessed situation where foreign quest was invited for a speech and during q&a someone not only asked the question in Polish (there was a translator so no problem) but even stressed that the question will be in Polish, because we are in Poland...

FeatureRush | 8 years ago | on: 19th-Century Lithuanians Who Smuggled Books to Save Their Language

First your comment reads quite... emotional? Both aggressive and defensive, almost to the point that one wants to avoid the discussion, but you asked in the edit so I reply. I assume you deeply care about the subject, but you need to understand, that if you want others to understand and maybe adopt your view it's better to tone down, avoid many short accusing questions etc... Also defending/explaining war by "but they started first before" always put you in a bad light...

Now, about how are you wrong. Wrong is too strong word here, I'm unfamiliar with many historical events you mentioned but I assume they really did happened. The general idea that Great Schism was a big source of tension, and directly and indirectly by events that resulted from it is and will be a source of tension, this is also true. The problem as I see it is the strength of this effect, you are right that it exists, but your comment reads as it was the dominating force that shaped this part of history, which many people not agree with. You also leave out many historical events that do not fit in, like Russia and Prussia working together to conquer PLC and later attacking Poland in 1939... Similarly when for example Napoleon attacked Russia, the west-east conflict was not the reason, it was just a tool to reinforce the conflict, and Napoleon actually wanted to conquer all and Russia was just one of many...

Wars can start for more "practical" reasons too (like oil) and historical/religious/ethnic reasons will soon follow, they can be present but they are not always the main reason.

Finally that bit about NATO troops could for some people change your comment from "comment about history" to "comment about politics pretending to be about history"...

FeatureRush | 8 years ago | on: 19th-Century Lithuanians Who Smuggled Books to Save Their Language

If I can split your argument into three, then

> I think the point is that what we today might think of as Cold War style rhetoric and rivalry has antecedents in the Russian empire and points earlier.

Is probably true, people just reference Cold War because it's well known symbol and the rest of the history is not needed for them...

> I would even go so far as to say the whole thing is from the Great Schism. (...)

No, not really... The story in the article is placed when PLC was conquered, and similar things happened not only in Lithuania but also in Poland, where it was done by both Cyrillic Russia and Latin Germany. I'm not an expert on Russian history, but I could bet that at certain times they also tried to uproot other Cyrillic cultures who were deemed unwelcome by the rulers (both communist and before). I agree with the other person that this is just authoritarian thing.

> A couple months ago in the context of all the US-Russia political drama I was thinking of this...(...)

Well this one depends on the general world view I guess? If you tell history as a story of clashing ideas, then there will be a clear narration and you will easily see patterns as you describe, ever repeating conflicts of similar forces. But just one way of looking is often not enough to see the whole thing. I also see the direction of looking at the past tensions as promising, but then when do you stop? In this particular case the way of writing could be just an artifact of an older conflict used to reinforce the current one. We dnn't need to repeat the past, we can just reuse it.

FeatureRush | 8 years ago | on: McClure steps back at 500Startups after internal sexual misconduct investigation

Yes, you are right about there being a choice. This is the core of the problem here. Many I feel look at it and wonder why pass a good opportunity to meet someone, we could both have a chance at something great (unending source of unwanted advances)... The advice about not trying it in professional settings is seen as taking away their freedom to date people, as being rejected without even ability to ask and by it being fundamentally unjust. What they fail to consider is how it look from the other side and how the very same innocent question from their point of view can be seen as some sort of "deal" and part of nightmarish recruitment process.

FeatureRush | 8 years ago | on: McClure steps back at 500Startups after internal sexual misconduct investigation

> If he wanted a relationship, there are infinitely better and more appropriate ways to go about it, especially if he thought she might actually be interested.

McClure aside, in general situation when during recruitment precess you meet someone you would like to date is there really a way to go about it that doesn't end badly? Message during recruitment is plain creepy. Asking them out after they are hired is bad for obvious reasons like you being the superior and him/her having the impression that this is the real reason they've been hired. There was at least one story on HN that I remember when someone wasn't hired and soon after was asked for a date and it also ended badly, even if that person waited some time to be "safe" that still could be counted as stalking and using information summited during the interview for personal reasons is bad.

But you can't even ask about their phone number anyway! It doesn't matter if your intentions are honest and you two could be a good couple if you met at different occasion. Once the recruitment process starts he/she is pretty much removed form your dating pool. Even if you ask nicely without any inappropriate signals - any move you make can be seen by him/her as you taking advantage of the situation. Even innocent question about phone number can have really scary implications from his/her point of view.

Sure it can end in nice date or maybe an awkward silence and you explaining yourself and apologizing or it can give them a true nightmare... Are you going to risk it?

FeatureRush | 8 years ago | on: How to name things: the hardest problem in programming (2014)

I got that advice from some talk about refactoring in OOP languages, as far as I can remember Manager and Calculator were the discussed bad class name examples, "what do you manage/calculate?". Explicitly naming things you operate on was part of the advice given in the talk.

FeatureRush | 8 years ago | on: How to name things: the hardest problem in programming (2014)

Some anonymous comment on the Internet told me once that the 'naming things' bit was about some problem in distributed systems, I guess it was a lie then?

Good slides, not only the advice, but also the steady peace of delivery, the programming ~ writing theme and overall structure.

I misses advice about never naming classes with words ending in -or and -er, is this still a thing?

In the context of functional languages one letter variables are often sold as a feature, where hindrance of cryptic names is overweighted by benefits of being able easier bring smaller amount of text into the mind of the programmer (may require some practice). And personally I also recently observed that this abstract, mathematic notation helps me focus on the very abstract and mathematic core of some definitions in Haskell. It's good to use word "Car" when dealing with cars, but when inside of morphism-monad-whatever 1-line function definition "a" is OK, who knows what datatype will implement it?

One advice that helped me about naming things is not to have things to name in the first place. Very often I used to create lots of variables representing intermediate and not really interesting steps of computation, resulting in horrible names like file_content, validated_content, parsed_content and so on... Just thinking first about how to structure things will prevent many of risky naming situations from even appearing.

FeatureRush | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: Must a Senior Developer be proficient in design, UX and Photoshop too?

Most small and medium digital agencies I know of use the word "developer" in that way, as someone who sets up and manages CMS for clients, usually also doing customizations using stock plug-ins and sometimes writing plug-ins themselves. Handling all from configuration files, code to looks, UI and even marketing and photo editing when needed. And I can even tell you of some other companies that use title developer for people who only configure Microsoft Sharepoint for their clients, even more in my country people who sell newly build apartments are also called developers. It is just a word, it is not a real problem here.

The problem here in my opinion are your missed expectations and how are you reacting to this situation. I could just tell you "yes, those people don't know what a developer is" but that will not help you grow.

Looking at the whole thing from my perspective you seem to be very disappointed that this company did not meet your expectations and perhaps that you did not meet theirs. It's just a job interview. It's OK. Sorry if they were unpleasant, but it was their choice and arguing what a true "developer" really is will not change the outcome. I understand that you are upset, but what good will come from arguing about agency, that "doesn't even have..." ? There is not really a right and wrong in this situation, just you and that company did not fit together, do not think about it as your failure or as them abusing some kind of universal rule. It may hurt you, because you care, but really it's just a minor annoyance. A mismatch.

FeatureRush | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: Must a Senior Developer be proficient in design, UX and Photoshop too?

It sounds like you applied for a senior developer position in some kind of interactive/digital/marketing agency... Skills you mentioned are required in that context. It would be different if it was a game dev company or embedded software shop or fintech software house, but all of them use "senior developer" as a name of a position.
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