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Same for me. I have a PhD from a top ten university in Computer Science, with publications, and strong but shorter work history.

I interviewed with a well-known startup here on HN that required a lengthy application material submission, which I spent a few hours on. Then talked with the CTO and felt the conversations went well. After two conversations I was ghosted.

Submitted to a large software company in Washington state which indicated they had "up to 100% remote" for specific roles. In the application I indicated "not available for relocation" and have only received automated rejection emails for them. I mention that last point because I suspect that may have been the reason.

I have also applied to roles from the last few Who's Hiring posts in positions that are more of a stretch for my line of work but with overlap in core technologies, but have not received so much as a conversation. One just silently rejected my application (I had to view in their workday site to see what the status was).

On the other hand, large companies like Google, Apple, etc. are (or were) very eager to move forward to interview me, even for multiple roles. But I cannot relocate and had to inform the recruiters I am unfortunately inflexible with this. Ironic, I find.

NVIDIA, Meta, many smaller companies (gitlab, duckduckgo, kagi, and other startups found here) seem to be the only tech employers that explicitly advertise remote work is okay with them. But some roles in the smaller companies aren't always a great match for my interests (maybe the culture would be, so I am trying to keep an open mind).


Title needs (2015)


A spacecraft perhaps could inflate lots of impact balloons that would cushion impact, allowing landing in any orientation. Then on landing, rotate with gyros or something until the legs are underneath and that way end upright?


Humans did it manually in the 60's. How hard can it be to do it with computers and radar? I don't want to sound like that guy but... how hard can it be?

Edit: My point being: spacex is already doing it on earth, dealing with stronger gravity and air non linearity.


The IM-1 Lander was supposed to land using a LIDAR altimeter, but they forgot to remove the safety before launch. They tried to make a last minute software change to use an experimental navigation system from NASA to get altimetry, but this didn't work. So the lander landed using visual navigation and IMU data only for the last 15km to the surface.

It probably would have landed upright if the LIDAR worked. It is impressive that it landed as intact as it did

[0] https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odys...


Humans have been driving cars since decades, how hard would it be to make a self-driving, well it seems it is difficult.


Because streets are not controlled environments. Planes have auto pilots for a long time, because air is a highly controlled environment with professionals agreeing to cooperate and making logical decisions (most of times).


This would be a cool simulation / programming game.


I highly recommend taking a look at Kerbal Space Program plus k/OS. I've done a few Kerbal hackathons with friends where we all get the same spacecraft, in the same scenario, and have to write k/OS scripts to perform some mission. Difficult, but fun and often hilarious!


I mean, it's not like it's rocket science!

More seriously, the humans in question were very skilled pilots with huge amounts of general flight experience and specific lunar training; they also had access to hardware that had already been expensively tested in the lunar environment. Neither of those were available to this project.


Pathfinder landed on Mars using that design:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Pathfinder#/media/File:Pa...

Having an atmosphere helps, though and that's not available on the Moon.


That's pretty much how the Soviets did it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_9


That's how they used to land on Mars.


The latest Indiana Jones used AI to make Ford’s face young for a whole lengthy scene.


Find true love in an American and immigrate as family. That’s easy peasy


Calling that true love at that point is like calling a mcChicken a healthy bite.


> Warning: This product is a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer.


I take it you're not familar with Prop 65? In California, you'll see that everywhere thanks to a well-intended but counterproductive ballot measure that introduced steep liability for anything that could possibly cause cancer at all, even if only egregiously mishandled. It's even on packages of food now!


It still surprises me that after 38 years of this obviously ineffective and wasteful proposition, no group has gotten around to putting a repeal on the ballot.


In California, ballot propositions are a form of direct democracy, and changes often require a referendum. Who has the time or money to campaign to convince voters to remove cancer warnings?


... Thankfully, I don't live in California.


Carbon?


Yes. If you never consume any carbon, you won't die from cancer!


If there's nanotubes in there, You're **ed


Switching to AMEX will make the card less usable internationally, too.


> ending another human's life leaves any possibility of redemption for a person

You realize the volunteer soldiers that enter a battle to kill other humans also fall under this scope? Yet in many countries we celebrate their return and service, despite what they may have done.

I agree these are not quite the same thing, in how a deed is carried out, but the end result is in fact the same.


It's called the department of defense for a reason, even if in plenty of cases the military is used offensively.

Volunteer soldiers that go abroad to try to annex another country at the behest of their local overlord are looked at differently then volunteer soldiers that defend their country from annexation. It's not that the 'end result is in fact the same', it's that circumstances matter. In some cases killing another person is acceptable, in most others it is not.

That's why we have so many very specific terms to describe the different situations in which one person kills another, and which of those applies is a big factor in whether we see the killer as having acted justifiably or not. Reiser is on the extreme side of that scale in terms of not having acted justifiably, then he compounded that by his stance during the subsequent trial.


> Volunteer soldiers that go abroad to try to annex another country at the behest of their local overlord are looked at differently then volunteer soldiers that defend their country from annexation.

Are they? Americans seem to think very highly of their veterans ... who all fought in distant wars in countries that were not an serious immediate threat to the US.


Context matters


> You realize the volunteer soldiers that enter a battle to kill other humans also fall under this scope?

Yes. And I strongly believe there's something wrong with their brains. Not so wrong as with the brains of murderers. But to let someone's words override your innate blocks against killing is some weaknes of the brain, easily exploitable with disastrous consequences for humanity.

It makes wars feasible.


I strongly disagree with you on that one. I can totally see myself volunteering to come to the defense of a country against invaders, I can absolutely not see myself volunteering (or even being conscripted) into helping some country to invade another (or to enlarge their territory).

I'm a conscientious objector against military service which at the time that I did so still carried a prison sentence and even if I ended up not going to prison (through some luck and a sympathetic police officer) I was more than willing to do so rather than to be used as a tool. So that takes care of the second part of that statement, the first has so far not been put to the test (and let's hope it stays that way).


+1

I would never serve for an offensive war, but for example I would have been proud to serve the Allies in WW2.


i think if you take a look at human history, the animal kingdom, etc, you will find that in fact it is you who has something strange going on in your brain


https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/28/natural-born...

Humans and other primates are more prone to this deficiency of the brain than other mammals.

But even so, only 2% of humans were killed by other humans. And since many killers usually kill more than one person killers are a miscule minority even in such deficient species as humans. Even with all the cultural pressure that glorifies killing in the "right circumstances".

Given that anyone who volunteers to be a killer has something wrong in him. Falls on the far end of some spectrum.


> anyone who volunteers to be a killer has something wrong in him

Consider the native american indian warriors who volunteered to defend their land against the invaders. Or jews in Poland who volunteered to defend against the Germans in WW2.

Does your statement apply to them as well?


Of course. Some of them.

Not everone who joins the army is a volunteer killer. Some people just want to help. Treat wounds. Recover wounded. Scare the enemy away. Some tentatively accept that some people might die in the process. People tend to accept that in war people die. They are more like armed robbers who'd love to have their goals met without killing anyone but some are accepting that someone might die in the process. But fraction of people are killers. They participate in the process in order to kill. Those are the most deficient ones. They are present in every place where people die, on both sides.


Some fraction signing up so they can gun someone down, sure, those people have bad motives and should be found and excluded.

But being willing to say "I'd kill to protect X if there is no other option" is not that.

Someone who becomes a surgeon so that he can kill a patient now and then and get away with it obviously has something wrong. Someone who becomes a surgeon and now and then causes a patient to die unintentionally (even if they intended to do the surgery, knowing it could result in death) is not the same.


Are you a pacifist who thinks that it is never OK to take a life, no matter the circumstances? In that case I understand what you think, even if that is not my way of thinking.

If you are not a pacifist, then I don't understand how you think a peaceful society should act when an aggressive neighbor tries to kill all of them?


I think it's ok to take life if it's your own life or help someone to take their own if there are good reasons for it.

I don't know how a peaceful society should act if neigbour tries to kill them. I think if that's the case, they made a lot of mistakes already, if they reached that point.

Probably the only thing to do is gather your killers and send them to kill and tell everybody it's ok this time. And most likely just die regardless of what you decided to do. If this society somehow survives it's way ahead because they not only repelled foreign killers but culled their own. That's pretty much was the result of WW2. Europe was destined for prosperity after it no matter who won. Just because higher fraction of killers than normal people died.


> I don't know how a peaceful society should act if neigbour tries to kill them. I think if that's the case, they made a lot of mistakes already, if they reached that point.

There are literally thousands of examples throughout history of smaller ethnic groups that were completely wiped out by their bigger and more aggressive neighbors.

Do you think these small groups were provoking their neighbors? Why? Did they all have a death wish?

How do you appease someone who is determined to take over your territory while getting rid of your people? What does the compromise look like?

> Europe was destined for prosperity after it no matter who won.

Wow. If the Germans would have won, they would have cleansed large parts of Europe. Do you call that "prosperity"?

Same thing with Stalin. If he had gotten a free rein across Europe, I don't imagine there would have been many Scandinavians left today, for instance. The few left would live somewhere in Siberia.


> There are literally thousands of examples throughout history of smaller ethnic groups that were completely wiped out by their bigger and more aggressive neighbors.

Exactly. Figting and killing didn't help them in any way.

> Do you think these small groups were provoking their neighbors? Why? Did they all have a death wish?

The wrong decision in that case was deciding to be separate from their neighbors despite the fact that they presented overwhelming force. They were multitude of ethnic groups who survived by getting assimilated into their stronger neighbors. You might argue that it's not a survival if culture disappears. But that's just words. Genes are what matters in any broader context.

> If the Germans would have won, they would have cleansed large parts of Europe. Do you call that "prosperity"?

They would possibly kill all the Jews which is unfortunate and a terrible loss. The rest of the populace would just become the part of their empire. And running an empire is a troublesome thing as countries like Britain found out. India used to be a British colony. And today more property is owned in London by the Indians than by native British people. Some regions of London are minority white. Nobody designed it like that. It is just a result of previous attempts at exploitation of their acquired empire. Same happened to France. Germans would eventually succumb to the same fate.

Stalin is a different thing. Just because Russians are terrible at everything. I'm still sure they wouldn't manage to keep whole Europe under their shoe for long. And if they did that would mean they seriously stepped up their game, so prosperity of sorts.


Appeasement didn't work in 1939, it wouldn't work now.


I'm not talking about appeasement. I'm talking about peacefully losing all there is to lose.


Edit: Reading your comments again, it does look like you are a pacifist?

> I think it's ok to take life if it's your own life or help someone to take their own if there are good reasons for it.

I read this as you think it is never OK to take a life in self defence, even if that means that tens of millions will be exterminated?

If so, you can disregard the rest:

> Figting and killing didn't help them in any way.

There are also many examples of much smaller ethnic groups who avoided complete extermination because they had a very competent army.

If you don't resist a neighbor who wants to exterminate your ethnic group, then the outcome is given. If you do resist, you still have a chance.

> The rest of the populace would just become the part of their (WW2 Germany) empire.

No. That is only true for northern and maybe western europe. Eastern europeans were considered vermin by them.

> They were multitude of ethnic groups who survived by getting assimilated into their stronger neighbors.

That can happen. Doesn't mean it's a given. I feel your overall logic reasoning leaves a lot to be desired? Do you strive to make logically sound arguments, or is that not important? If not, I don't think we can take this any further.

There is a sliding scale here. You have everything from pressure to align your country with the bigger neighbor all the way down to 100% extermination.

Germany's plans for the Slavic peoples were complete extermination. There was nothing the slavs could do or say to convince the German leadership to change their mind.

> I'm Polish. How much good do you think killing Germans did for Polish people in 1940?

Maybe you think that Germany didn't plan to exterminate all poles. Ok, let's just pretend that's the case. By advocating that Poland shouldn't have resisted, you're at the same time advocating handing over the 3 million Polish jews to Germany without a fight, knowing what would happen to them. Are you really OK with that?

> Stalin is a different thing. Just because Russians are terrible at everything. I'm still sure they wouldn't manage to keep whole Europe under their shoe for long. And if they did that would mean they seriously stepped up their game, so prosperity of sorts.

Sure, the Russians would have had a hell of a time keeping western europe under control. Stalin's answer to such problems were simply killing enough people until the problem disappeared. Not letting them do their own thing.

During the 1930's, Stalin sent out his underlings with orders to kill a certain quota in given area. The quotas were in the hundreds of thousands.


I guess you could say that my views align with views of absolute pacifists at least when it comes to moral evaluation of war related activities.

However I arrived at it independently from two beliefs I hold. First, that killing is innately evil. The other one is that I believe that the idea that good and evil are somehow additive and can cancel each other out is worth of people from two thousand years ago. This simplistic view of things that are core of any morality was (and is) propagated by major religions for the purpose of getting away with evil. Religiously fossilized perception of good/evil as a single axis is far behind current cultural development of humanity.

More accurate perception, I believe, is to see good and evil as orthogonal. To be considered independently. To be rewarded and punished separately and accordingly.

> I read this as you think it is never OK to take a life in self defence, even if that means that tens of millions will be exterminated?

It's good to save millions. It's evil to take life. If you managed to save millions without taking a life you are purely good. Way better than a person who saved millions but killed someone.

A billion people owe their entire existence to Norman Borlaug. Would you be willing to absolve him of guilt if he intentionality killed 100 people during his research?

I assume not. Why should fighting be considered different?

> There are also many examples of much smaller ethnic groups who avoided complete extermination because they had a very competent army.

Does some specific case come to your mind?

> Do you strive to make logically sound arguments, or is that not important?

I agree that logic is important and I would like to have reasoned beliefs (apart from things I take as axioms, like killing is evil, less suffering is good).

> Maybe you think that Germany didn't plan to exterminate all poles. Ok, let's just pretend that's the case.

We don't need to pretend. We know that they didn't. Slavs were destined to be subservient workers in their plans. Many ethnic Poles died in death camps, second only to Jews. The main purposes was to terrorize populace (to achieve control), reduce number of Poles (to make lebensraum for Germans) and eliminate Polish elite (that was deemed counterproductive to the idea of turning Poles into workers). All in all terrible, far end of the evil axis. But completely unpreventable by attempting to kill Germans. I could argue that some lives might have been saved if Germans believed they already have full control so that terrorizing is unnecessary.

Poland has a history of armed resistance and uprisings that almost all failed. Again, compare to how much suffering was inflicted on countries that didn't resist this much. Poland was leveled.

> you're at the same time advocating handing over the 3 million Polish jews to Germany without a fight

And you are advocating handing them out with a fight. Result is the same. Just more people dead.

The correct action is to evade, hide, run, bargain. Fighting is in almost all cases the worst possible idea even from purely utilitarian standpoint. And for the cases it somehow succeeds it still doesn't mean it's only good in a moral sense. When it's effects ar deaths and destruction it is also evil.

> During the 1930's, Stalin sent out his underlings with orders to kill a certain quota in given area. The quotas were in the hundreds of thousands.

I think Russian would be way worse than Germans. Then again Eastern Europe was effectively given away to Stalin unconditionally and most survived, no thanks to attempts at armed resistance. Just by waiting out till those idiots run out of steam.


This is such a naive point of view. Imagine seeing somebody getting assaulted, genocided, murdered in front of your eyes and then closing your eyes for the sake of 'peace,' or the idea of it that you have in mind anyway.

You should tell the Polish people in 1940s that they should only treat wounds and not fight back.


I'm Polish. How much good do you think killing Germans did for Polish people in 1940?

Compare to France and other western European countries that immediately retreated, lost one battle and peacefully folded and stayed down till the end.


How can this work "for German users"? Why is this not a "for a Firefox user"? I am German - how do I know this is enabled for me? I do not live in Germany.


From the article:

> Firefox version 120 introduces the cookie banner blocker.

> Enable: By default, it's on in private windows for users in Germany.


That doesn't say how they determine "users in Germany". Dial IP into some service and look at geo location? Sort of pointless if VPN is used?


Oh, I get your point now :-)


It clearly means "up-to-date Firefox instances located in Germany", your nationality doesn't really matter.

Germany was probably chosen because Firefox's market share is fairly high there


The article itself doesn't say that.

> The cookie banner blocker is available starting from Firefox version 120, and it's automatically enabled for users in Germany browsing in Private Browsing Mode.

> ...

> Enable: By default, it's on in private windows for users in Germany.

> ...

> Why Germany and private browsing mode?

> Our initial launch in Germany and private browsing mode has specific reasons:

> - Private browsing mode displays cookie banners repeatedly, making this feature especially useful. Germany, as a part of the European Union, is a prominent market where cookie banners are noticeable due to GDPR.

> - We plan to gather insights from this launch before potentially expanding the feature to a broader audience.


Firefox periodically dials home and reconfigures itself based on the arbitrary whims of Mozilla. It's really kind of disgusting.


For those interested, the mothership is: incoming.telemetry.mozilla.org

I'm fairly certain the telemetry can be disabled, but it is enabled by default and it's among the top 10 most blocked addresses in my Pi-Hole.

Frankly, I'm weighing the benefits to cost ratio of just blacklisting all Mozilla domains if this gets worse.


Telemetry and "studies" are both checkboxes in the privacy section of firefox's preferences.

I usually turn both off right after changing the default search engine and disabling search suggestions, when I setup a new install.


Turns out this only turns off some of the telemetry. Turning it off completely is not entirely trivial.

https://github.com/K3V1991/Disable-Firefox-Telemetry-and-Dat...


Mozilla claiming to be the champions of privacy (among other virtues) makes this arguably worse than Google, Microsoft, et al. because they're at least upfront about their telemetry.


And the other browsers don't?

I've had my share of weird issues in Chrome because they enabled an "experiment" of some kind.


Yes, they are all doing it, and it's all bad. Though Firefox is especially culpable since most of their marketing is about privacy. It's apparently only bad when other people are spying on their users.



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