Having failed multiple interviews with Google and other companies mentioned in this post, it really drives home the huge difference between Haseeb's work ethic and mine. If I had put forth 10% of the effort he has expended this year to preparing then I'd have aced the interviews. But I didn't. Instead I spend most of my free time doing frivolous things that aren't satisfying.
What percentage of HN posters have applied to Google? And how many received offers? I think it's amazing that he outclasses so many of us after being in our industry for a year. Good for him.
Context and disclaimer: I run an intense and successful bootcamp focused on preparing for Tech interviews. A 100+ people from all over the world have prepped with us since we started a year and a half ago. http://interviewkickstart.com.
We've since learnt a lot about what makes successful engineers. While nearly everyone who goes thru us (and is actively looking) gets placed somewhere nice, the people who crack some of the hardest interviews generally fall into ONE or MORE of the following categories:
1. They are just bright from the get go. A high IQ.
Haseeb, from the little I've read about him, seems to fall into this category. They can get by with normal amount of practice viz. brush-up.
2. They are extremely prepped.
A crude measure of prep, is how many algorithmic problems you've practiced. Some of these people have crossed 300+ problems. Written code for each. And repeated it. It takes several months to a year to do this with diligence and focus.
3. They have been coding for a long time. Almost precocious-ly.
They have written so much code, that a lot of constructs are now muscle memory. All they need to do in an interview, is to intuit the solution. After that, they impress the heck with their coding fluency.
4. They are competitive programmers for some time
They don't have to be toppers or winning competitions. e.g. Yellow on Topcoder is sufficient.
5. They went to a particularly strong and competitive CS program
Some programs in the country prepare you for such interviews. Rare, and difficult to get into, but they do.
6. They got a soft interview-panel.
Interviews are heavily dependent on who interviews you. Especially at large companies, there is a wide variance in grading standard, experience in interviewing and beliefs, and hence there is a wide variation in talent, despite centralized hiring committees.
You need a bit of luck anyway, but sometimes you get an entire panel that you happen to gel with. A little bit of preparation and getting such a panel puts you over the magic line.
You're making assumptions. You're assuming that your position is "reasonable", and you're assuming that most people (at least in the western world) agree with you. And then to make your logic work, you're assuming that there's a vast conspiracy to oppress most people to prevent them from having freedom of speech and press.
The reality is that there aren't a lot of places where there's anything close to an absolute freedom of speech or the press. America really sticks out as an anomaly there, by having it written into the constitution. If it were really a strong part of a nation's culture, you'd think this wouldn't be so unusual, but it is, and in fact other western nations have laws completely contrary to this to some degree. Just look at the UK, where the truth is not an absolute defense against libel.
That is absurd; prosecutions decline to pursue cases all the time.
Look at the enormous change in U.S. police prosecutions in the last couple of years due to public pressure. I seriously doubt the amount of misconduct drastically increased.
They're both representative forms of government with adversarial systems of law.
Though CaptainZapp's reply was low-signal, snarky, and redundant with her/his down vote, it did inspire me to learn more about German law.
It appears that by statute, German prosecutors have little discretion when it comes to pursuing convictable cases. They may only nonprosecute minor offenses, i.e. those with sentences of less than one year. However, there are exceptions that are applied by prosecutors that could apply to this case. One is the "serves the public interest" exception; another is the "may damage state interests" exception. Either way, the answer isn't cut and dry and contains way more nuance than my original comment and its reply suggest.
To be fair to Le Roux, he switched to the methamphetamine/cocaine trade after his holdings in Hong Kong were seized. It's possible I misinterpreted the article, but it appeared to me that he was trying to recover his previous wealth. It seems like a psychologically normal thing for a multimillionaire who lost millions (but is still wildly wealthy) to attempt to restore that wealth.
Do towers record past telemetry data? Assuming they do, the granularity of knowing that a particular tower handled a phone ping is comparatively useless. A guessed location (stored on the iPhone) based off of cell tower triangulation and the occasional GPS calculation is far more valuable.
I do agree that we should consider the FBI's statement with skepticism.
> the granularity of knowing that a particular tower handled a phone ping is comparatively useless.
No, it's not. A simple correlation with other phones tells you who is traveling together (co-travelers). This only requires knowing which phones are near each tower, at a fairly low temporal granularity.
I'm sure there are additional ways to analyze that data, too. The travel and relationship map that COTRAVELER discovers is merely the project we know about.
Yeah, cities that are not in the active earthquake zone lovingly called The Ring of Fire. Remember, the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge cost 1 million per foot of road up to it.
I don't agree with whoever downvoted your post; it contributes to the discussion.
> The NSA itself knows very well that if the gizmos they provide aren't usable
What isn't usable about a desktop computer? According to the article, she just liked using BBs more. Confusingly, the article seems to conflate a few things.
1. She wanted to use her Unclassified//SBU Blackberry in the SCIF. Because of phone exploits that the NSA employs against other heads of state [1], State Department guidelines require her to leave it outside of her office that has classified computers. Obama's special Blackberry might let him talk to DNC leadership and big donors, but I'm guessing he uses a normal phone for that. Why couldn't she use a desktop phone and her unclassified computer to check her email to donors, campaign managers, and DNC leadership? How does a separate email server solve this problem?
2. She felt the need to have a separate email server. What this solves is never mentioned in the article. All State Department employees have access to the Unclassified network. Most have access to State Department provided Blackberries for that network, and also to 2FA token generators to permit them to VPN in. Traveling all over the world doesn't restrict the usage of either of these. Also, DSS sets up a classified network wherever the Sec State stays.
The only plausible reason to set up this outside email server is to evade FOIA and discuss classified topics without the risk of a government employee seeing classified information on an unclassified network. I'm really trying to understand any other reason to do this.
[1] I didn't see a Blackberry exploit in the Snowden leaks, but it's probably safe to assume that the risk is significant. Imagine how valuable it would be to get room audio of political or trade discussions before stepping into a meeting with the U.S. Secretary of State.
If you re-read that portion of the article, the State Department rep used that phrase to paraphrase the NSA's response. That was not the actual response; nobody who wants to keep their job communicates inter-agency like that.
What percentage of HN posters have applied to Google? And how many received offers? I think it's amazing that he outclasses so many of us after being in our industry for a year. Good for him.