ngkabra

The article talks about a 2-dimensional grid which starts at (0,0) (bottom right) and extends infinitely to the right and the top, so all (x,y) for non-negative integers x,y exist. But x or y negative does not exist. Given a list of possible jumps e.g. (+1,+10) or (-20,+13), and a target destination, e.g. (700,1). Does there exist a series of valid jumps that takes you from (0,0) to (700,1) without ever going off grid (i.e. into negative territory)?

This problem might or might not be NP-Harder. However, now extend the problem to higher dimensional grids. At some number of dimensions, the problem becomes definitely NP-Harder (i.e. NP-hard, decidable, but not in NP)

It works in pre-interview filtering rounds because companies hiring processes are usually broken and the smartest people are not working on those aspect.

If, on the actual job, you're copy-pasting buggy ChatGPT code, someone will notice. If the other people at the company don't notice and do something about it, the company isn't likely to survive for too long.

That would be Chandraayan: moon + journey/path. Chandrayaan is moon + vehicle.

Maybe the libraries are less known because they're lesser libraries?

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"Less known libraries" would be libraries that fewer people know. "Lesser known libraries" would be libraries of a lower quality.

[source](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/24719/difference-...)

While that is sort of true for a take-home test, there is still value in giving candidates an online or in-person programming task that needs to be completed in a small amount of time (e.g. 1 hour)

Sounds good in theory. But if enough companies started doing this, I can guarantee you that Indian companies will spring that will offer to create an open source project for you for $100 to $1000 depending on complexity of project, and amount of activity the github profile would show. I wish I was kidding.

Right. In fact, in my opinion, the most important thing a conference provides is the quality of the peer-review and the selection process. So a conference that claims peer-review, but does not provide it, is really taking your money and not providing value for it.

The problem is more like not teaching the students how to find a reputable path to publication and not weighing the quality of the venue.

Actually, in my opinion, most of the students couldn't care less about publications. They just want their degree, but the system refuses to let them have it without the publication. Hence they're forced to publish at conferences that publish without checking.

The problem is indeed with the system that requires publications, and then accepts publications in dodgy conferences. What else can be expected of the students in this situation?

Actually, I did not get worked up about the existence of such conferences. My main gripe is against the education system and the ridiculous requirement that makes it mandatory for all post-graduate students to have 2 published papers before they are granted their degree. Given the current state of research and higher education in India, the inevitable result of this requirement would be that students will be forced to pay to publish at such conferences.

I know that this is a problem, and I don't blame you.

However, one of the admissions committee members of a top-10 US university told me how they deal with this problem.

That they keep track of good universities in India, and what GPA is considered good in India. Occasionally, they take a chance with a student with an interesting resume from an unknown University, and continue selecting from there if that student does well. Repeat this process, and over time they end up with a good list of sources of good students from India; and they ignore applications from all other Indians.

Thanks. I've updated the intro of the post to make this clearer.

The PhD applications problem is a different issue. We're churning out a million engineers every year, and a good fraction of them are convinced that getting into a Masters/PhD program in the US is the gateway to riches and a better life. A few of these students are smart enough to know where to apply and how to apply, but most of them are clueless enough to actually spam any faculty email addresses they can find from any US university. And yes, they're mass emails, in the sense that they send out these mails to 10s of people without bothering to customize them.

The important thing to remember is that India is a vast and varied country. We have the worst students, but we also have the best students - so don't completely ignore all emails from all Indian sounding names; one of them might just be from the next superstar at your school :-)

Nope. If you can't afford to pay for the conference, your paper does not get published at all (of the two papers I got accepted, I paid for one and that appeared, while the one I did not pay for did not appear). And once you pay, then actually attending the conference is optional.

Most conferences are supposed to have a selection process (in most cases a "peer review" process) in which all submissions are sent to multiple reviewers who are experts in that area, and only papers which are deemed "acceptable" by a majority of the reviewers are published. Usually this means that the paper should be relevant to the conference, should have results that are worth publishing, and should have something new - something that hasn't been done before.

All of this is supposed to happen before the paper is accepted for publication. The proceedings of top conferences in most fields are, in my opinion, more important than the actual conference itself.

They claimed that they accepted almost half. My guess is that they accepted 100% of the submissions they received. Because if there was any process for rejection, both my papers should have been rejected.

I am not sure I understand what you're saying.

I know that getting a paper in a conference like this is not an achievement. However, I know lots of students who do not know this. I know faculty in Engineering colleges who do not know this. I know many people who actually pay money to get published in such conferences because they really believe it's an achievement.

Hence, this expose to improve awareness.

I am not sure how I have poorly represented the academic system and myself by doing that, so could you elaborate?

They did say it's an INTERNATIONAL conference...

Good point. I have that point buried way down in the post. Need to give it prominence somewhere in the beginning.

Don't even get me started on the quality of the advisors... :-(

What depressed me the most was seeing the poor, sincere students who had come to the conference to present. Some of them were tweaking their PPTs. Others were going over notes for their talk. They were clearly (I think) under the impression that presenting at this conference was a major achievement. Of the 22 papers accepted by the conference (i.e. 22 people paid to get their papers published), only about 10 came to present, which leads me to suspect that the remaining 12 knew the true nature of this conference.

Original author here. The two things you pointed out were exactly the two things that first caused me to get suspicious of this conference.

However, as notthetup points out, there are lots of people in the Indian education system who don't know this. And the statement I made: Seems like an impressive conference, and getting a paper published in this conference should be a big achievement on any student’s resume, right? is actually something many students and faculty in our engineering colleges actually think.

(Edit: formatting)

The love of truth, maybe?

Really stirred? I thought he proved that motion is impossible...

I find myself using these aliases regularly:

    df = diff --color --color-words --abbrev
    st = status -s
    l = log --graph --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commig --decorate

This description is a bit confusing, so I'll assume that the protocol was this:

100 people are asked a possibly self-incriminating question - "Are you indulging in bad activity X?" They are expected to toss a coin. If the coin said tails, they are expected to give a truthful answer. If the coin said heads, they are expected to say "Yes."

Now, no single person needs to worry about self-incrimination, since they can always claim that their "Yes" answer was the result of a "heads" on the coin toss. But still, you can get an estimate of the percentage of bad activity X going on, by subtracting 50 from the number of "Yes" answers and doubling.

(This is assuming of course that the subjects believe your claim that there is no way for individuals to self-incriminate - which is certainly not a given, IMO.)

At 12 characters, this is definitely not the shortest, but it is a totally different approach than the other solutions:

    >>> f = lambda: g()if 0 else(1)
    >>> f()
    1

If you're a user in the modern internet, it is not cool for you to keep yourself so much at the mercy of companies whom you don't pay.

I always keep a Thunderbird client running in the background of my laptop, which sucks out all emails from gmail and keeps a local copy. Yes, it would not be cool for gmail to one day suddenly cut me off, and yes, I feel Google, with its "Do no Evil" policy will not do that to me. But still, I prefer to make my copy of important data right now, thank you very much, instead of whining later that this is not cool.

Same with my Flickr pics and Delicious links (downloaded using a script). And my Facebook data I really don't care about.

It is very likely that Kottke does know about the reasons behind Van Halen's free bowl of M&M's since the link in his article is to the Snopes page that exists for the sole purpose of explaining those reasons.