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I mean, obviously all the behaviors in the article are undesirable. The joke is in proposing other ones. Surely people are being amusingly self deprecating not precisely honest.

I interviewed a Meta Senior SWE in 2023. Guy couldn't write the most basic Python loop. Attempts were made. I didn't expect a list comprehension. This was just a warmup exercise fizz-buzz level so everyone can feel confident and talk. Everyone just smashes it. I could have done it as a teenager. Had to call it off after 15 min of trying. It was too much. But he took it on the chin. "Yep, thanks, sorry I didn't get too far. Bad day, maybe" or something like that. Most confident guy I've ever talked to. I was impressed by that - to totally bomb and be cool about it. Good for him.

The 3-year old anecdote is a bit pointless. It literally could have been a bad day. I've burnt myself out on a problem the night before and absolutely bombed simple interview questions, too. Or it just happened to be the least competent engineer at Meta. It doesn't give much information on their average employee, though

Oh totally. In general I don’t think you can conclude anything about anyone, really. Yesterday they were someone. Today someone else.

We had the same experience with Meta engineers. One candidate had been with Meta/Facebook for seven years and had nothing to show for it. They had an incredibly hard time articulating what work they actually did. It was something related to storage, but pretty much every answer was "well, actually someone else does that part". Also same experience with basic coding, no actual skills, yet somehow manages to have a CS degree.

Someone has to be doing the actual work at Meta, but that might not be the people who are seeking out new jobs. So we get this false impression that their engineers are a bit... not good, because those are the ones actually leaving.


Hard to do. The same people with the collection and tracking infrastructure required are infinitely sue-able so you need legal protection if anything goes wrong.

Really don't think this is any issue given the post we are commenting on...

Probably terminal emulator is like iTerm2 and double click to select and copy to clipboard is feature.

Not all ageism is illegal.

I am not a native English speaker so I actually geniunely wonder:

1. Could you please tell more?

2. Could this be said for other -ism s as well? (Sexism, Racism, Ableism, Classism, Nationalism, Nepotism)


In the US ageism is illegal if you are discriminating against someone for being too old. It is not illegal in the US to discriminate against someone based on how young they are

I see, thank you for the info.

And is this only about the employment, or generally?


I like to pay the author for the marginal cost and then once it's hit a sum that can be transferred I do that. e.g. I estimate about $1E-12 per time I hit Cmd-C and Cmd-V on each book. So far, no author has hit the threshold for me to send them their cent, but I dearly believe "render unto Caesar what is Caesar". It's important we pay authors.

The 'textbook cartel' plays the same role for authors as Ticketmaster plays for artists: they're the bad guy so that artists can charge more.

This banana has reached mythical banana status because of rarity. The flavor of various tropical bananas is way better. Both Taiwan and India have many varieties substantially better tasting than Gros Michel.

UK stats are bogus because one in five new cars there are paid for by the government under the Motability scheme. What it actually costs is hard to say because we don't know where they're measuring the price at. Motability could have an agreement, or they might be not counting the motability money spent and so on.

Nope…

People who receive PIP can choose to use to lease a car from Motability which is an independent scheme

Those people could equally choose to have an ICE car


I use a similar trick with most software. Instead of buying the online one, I get it on The Pirate Bay. These days even open source software you can simply just apply Claude and get a different version.

People online will kick up a fuss about GPL and shit but in real life no one bothers. Shoplift. Close an OSS project. Who cares.

Sometimes I even ride without a ticket. In Europe/Asia especially if you act like clueless American they’ll let you off every time. Done it so many times haha. Some of these places even they will put fruits outside. You can just take extra and hide it. They can’t tell.

One time on drive to Bury St. Edmunds small town in the UK I saw a little farm shop with some sign saying to leave payment there. Zero enforcement. I just took the fruits. No flipper zero needed.

Good life hack. Social hacks like these are not so common but if you’re clever you can get a lot.


In some specific instances, this approach is clever. Taken as a general philosophy, it’s regrettable, harmful, unethical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons


You can't Categorical Imperative me. I'm a hacker.

you kant hack me, I don't use computers

More often than not, they’re aware but let it slide because they pity you

Yeah, that's the social engineering part. It's a hacker trick. "Cmaan, I'm a little guy I'm a little birthday boy" https://x.com/eshear/status/1941696051884458278?s=20

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