Interesting Links for 19-06-2020

[andrewducker]

Warren Ellis Accused Of Sexual Coercion

(tags:WarrenEllis abuse OhForFucksSake comics )

UK virus-tracing app switches to Google-Apple privacy-centric model

(tags:apple google pandemic apps uk privacy )

Trump Facebook Ad Openly Using a Nazi Symbol For "Political Prisoner"

(tags:republicans nazis Holocaust wtf OhForFucksSake USA viaSwampers )

NHS coronavirus app to be scrapped after only detecting 4% of contacts on iPhones

(tags:privacy apple Google pandemic apps )

Masked arsonist might've gotten away with it if she hadn't left Etsy review

(tags:police review Etsy wtf )

This kind of shit is why you can't trust it when people "Just want to ask a few questions"

(tags:OhForFucksSake communication fraud )

How are TV subtitles made? Are they done by a human or a machine? (I could not do this job)

(tags:technology BBC subtitles )

FizzBuzz: One Simple Computing Interview Question

You'd be astounded how many people fail this. People going for computer jobs who actually can't program.
(tags:interviews jobs computers )

Vegetarian? Jewish? Muslim? Government food parcels may not be much use to you

(tags:food pork UK government )

Social progress is at the heart of community politics

(tags:politics community )

UK health ministry has no records on Turkish PPE fiasco and won't say if files destroyed

(tags:UK pandemic OhForFucksSake )

Comments

You'd be astounded how many people fail this. People going for computer jobs who actually can't prog

[doug]

Can confirm. I've done a lot of interviewing people for jobs over the years, skewing very techie. I don't use FizzBuzz itself, but very similar, simple coding tests. They are useful as conversation starters for actually able candidates - getting in to performance and space/speed and maintainability tradeoffs as the requirements might grow and change over time. Indeed, good candidates often want to know about the context before they write a single line of code.

But the main point is to screen *out* the ones who sound utterly plausible in interview, and have an entirely plausible CV, often with coding jobs behind them with good references, but literally cannot write *any* working code for the simplest of toy problems. I am not exaggerating here.

Every time we've had a shortlist of 4-6 coders to interview - and I've never been short of candidates so these are 4-6 good ones on paper - at least one has flunked this test utterly. They'll do absolutely anything to try to avoid actually doing it, and when they do write something down, it's gibberish and can't possibly work. You get them to talk you through it and it's bewildering nonsense that sounds like they're talking about a program but doesn't come close to solving the problem.

I once, near the start of my interviewing career, appointed someone who would have failed that test had we had one, and I was the most junior person on the panel so it wasn't entirely my fault, although I was the only actually technical person so it was to a large degree. It was a miserable, draining experience for everyone for the entire year it took to get rid of them.

The only tip I have for candidates regarding this (assuming you can actually code!) is to be aware that while asking for more context before cracking code can be a very positive sign, stalling on actually writing any code is a showstopping bad sign and you don't want to run close to raising that flag.

Re: You'd be astounded how many people fail this. People going for computer jobs who actually can't

[mtbc]

In being interviewed for coding jobs I'd been puzzled at how easily I was impressing people with the more technical/coding portions of the process, a lot of it felt like freshman undergrad computer science. This background helps to explain why, I guess maybe my typical competition really sucked!

One of my worst hiring mistakes was letting a less-technical (well, still with a math degree) colleague's very positive opinion plus a great-looking resume sway me in agreeing to the hire of a lovely guy who turned out to not easily understand the unremarkable code he was looking at. He didn't make it past the probationary period. On the flip-side the other worst mistake was hiring a guy who was very good but not quite as good as he thought.

Re: You'd be astounded how many people fail this. People going for computer jobs who actually can't

[jducoeur]

On the flip-side the other worst mistake was hiring a guy who was very good but not quite as good as he thought.

Reminds me of an intern we hired at a job about 20 years ago. *Very* smart guy -- totally aced these algorithmic questions, loved writing the most efficient possible code, and so on.

Problem was, he turned out to be *utterly* self-absorbed, and convinced that efficiency was the only thing that mattered. He couldn't write user-facing systems to save his life, and that super-efficient code turned out to be impenetrable and unmaintainable.

Suffice it to say, we didn't offer him a job at the end of that internship (to his loud dismay). And ever since, I've been a little suspicious of focusing too much on algorithms in interviews: I want to see evidence of code that is *good*, not just clever...

Re: You'd be astounded how many people fail this. People going for computer jobs who actually can't

[naath]

just so long as no-one asks me to write correctly spelled code on a whiteboard while they watch...
(I have bad hands and panic under pressure; give me 30mins with my keyboard/text editor of choice and you'll have some working code; make me do it 'live' with a qwerty keyboard and vi and something might get broken)

[ninetydegrees]

"How are TV subtitles made? Are they done by a human or a machine? (I could not do this job)"

Fascinating and what I got from this is that 1) these people are most assuredly underpaid and understaffed 2) should have better working conditions.

[inamac]

Agreed. I use subtitles on pre recorded programmes, and am constantly impressed by some quite esoteric knowledge (especially on antique and history programmes) but switch off for sport and news because they are simply too distracting (but then, I've never seen the need for commentary on sport, let alone subtitling it!)

[anna_wing]

I don't know if the UK has a centralised doctrinal authority for Muslims or how strict it might be; most authorities consider that eating what would otherwise be haram, in an 'eat this or starve'-type emergency situation, would not then be an occasion of sin.

Presumably food-parcel recipients in the UK would have other sources of food, so in those circumstances observant Muslims should not eat the haram item. On the other hand, not all Muslims are observant, or would be observant given the choice. I am not entirely comfortable with the idea of helping to impose a religion-based rule on people who may or may not actually wish to follow that rule. Ideally of course individuals would have a choice. In the food-parcel context I appreciate that that might be a bit difficult.

[jack]

I don't think I would want the government to judge who is a Muslim and give out food on that basis. I know some countries have that problem of society policing religious mores and it is horrible: the government typically shouldn't have any knowledge of your level of observance. But I don't *think* that's the most likely failure mode in the UK.

If there were a more inclusive alternative I would have assumed it involved having two or three basic options available to cover the most common needs, and allowing people to choose.

I am torn because I am fortunate enough I usually am in situations where I am offered a choice or can make my own arrangements, and I don't want to be oblivious to many people not having the chance. But also, I don't think religion should be a privilege available only to people who can afford it, if there's food made available to people who can't shop during the pandemic it should make some effort to see that people can eat it.

[anna_wing]

Someone from UNICEF told me once that they hand out emergency rations to some extent regardless of whether it is exactly what the recipients are used to eating, because (a) sometimes it's what they have, and (b) the recipient can usually sell or trade the item, thus also helping to get the local economy moving again. They don't worry too much about seeing some food aid ending up in local markets. If people want to sell their biscuits and buy rice, that's fine.

[cmcmck]

A friend's old mum up in Stockton is ninety and getting these parcels- nearly all tinned stuff which she never uses.........

[momentsmusicaux]

I'd love to see some of the examples of the bad FizzBuzz code!

I reckon a lot of people (me included!) would trip up in the order of checking for multiples. You have to check for multiples of 15 first, because otherwise the condition for multiples of 3 or 5 will pass!

[andrewducker]

Except that's not the final design he ends up with...

[jack]

I think if you understand that much you are probably fine. Even if you get the order wrong and have to fix it. I haven't done hiring, but I think the people who are getting this wrong are like, people who can follow the surface forms of being a programmer but just haven't done any actual programming, so struggle with even the level of "writing a loop and a conditional". Possibly being quite senior if they can tell other people what to do and not have to do it.

I googled for example of failure and it was interesting

[azurelunatic]

A friend of mine expressed excitement about going to a convention and meeting Ellis. She was a big fan. Post-convention, she was no longer a big fan and didn't want to talk about it.

I put him on a mental list of possibly predatory, definitely assholes.

[andrewducker]

That really sucks, and I'm sorry for your friend (and everyone else he treated badly)

[calimac]

The FizzBuzz coding test was amazingly lucid, in that it made clear to a non-coder 1) what coding consists of, 2) what exactly is complicated about this particular example; 3) how the most important part is ensuring your work is clear so that somebody else coming along later to rework it can edit it properly.

[andrewducker]

That's great! I thought it was one of the best explanations I'd seen, and was probably clear to a non programmer, and it's good to have confirmation!

[ckd]

I've found Tom Scott to do a really good job of extracting the key points for an explanation that's clear, concise, and correct even if it's not complete. (In the case of FizzBuzz, it's pretty much complete because the topic isn't that big.)

Regarding 3), a recent book on software engineering describes the discipline as "programming integrated over time". That implies that the result should be comprehensible across gaps of time, including for the author. (If I revisit my own code a year after writing it, "I have no memory of this place" sums it up pretty well.)

[calimac]

re completeness and size of topic, another admirable quality of this explanation is that it's easy to imagine how the problem would scale up to examples of much greater size and complexity.

[dewline]

1. As I noted elsewhere: I was a longtime internet camp follower of his. Dealing with an ongoing sense of guilt/complicity here, in addition to other stuff.

3. I am severely tempted to adopt that symbol as a form of "I am Spartacus!" defiance. I'm sure the Trumpists will happily take it in any of several Wrong ways instead, but what of that anyway?

4.Yikes! :-(

[ckd]

I've changed my Facebook profile photo to a bust of Sophie Scholl, with a white rose placed on the shelf below; this goes with my cover photo, a picture of the pavement monument to the White Rose outside the university building where she was arrested. I figure if the Trump campaign is going to use symbols from their 1940s German heroes, I will use symbols from mine[1].

(Note that there were reportedly 88 versions of the ad, and the first sentence of the ad text has 14 words. This is very unlikely to be an accident.)

[1] In the Before Times I regularly visited Munich 1-2x per year for work, and I had another trip planned for August. On each of the past several trips I have set time aside to go to the LMU campus to remember Hans and Sophie Scholl, Kurt Huber, and the other members of the White Rose.

[anna_wing]

I had no idea about the designation system for different types of prisoners in Nazi territory. I thought it was a stop sign at first. The easiest way to de-fang that might be to start using it in mundane contexts. Manhole covers, traffic signs ("moose crossing", that sort of thing). If any commercial enterprise has a logo involving a red triangle, it might be persuaded to sue for trademark infringement.

The swastika retains its proper meaning in Asia, since Buddhists, Hindus, Jains etc have successfully resisted attempts by westerners of both left and right to appropriate it (a lot of us were very happy that Japan stood firm against pressure to change the swastika symbol that is used on maps to signify a Buddhist temple (as opposed to a Shinto shrine, which has a torii gate symbol) for the Tokyo Olympics.

re: Trump Facebook Ad Openly Using a Nazi Symbol For "Political Prisoner"

[darkoshi]

The ad was taken down "because it goes against Facebook Advertising Policies."

But it's very interesting/eye-opening/discouraging to look at the other ads in the Facebook Ad library for that advertiser and others. I will make a post with some more info on what I found for future reference.

..

That alphabet song isn't nearly as creepy as some of those other children's videos there were referenced from articles a few years ago. I sort of like it. But it is unusual to hear a children's song in what I would guess is a minor key instead of major.

Edit: Alphabet song link was from your next post. After watching the start of another one of their videos, I agree there is definitely a creepy vibe going on, though they still seems oddly appealing/amusing to me (as an adult viewing them): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4QgcWckL38