yeputons

The major European exception being the UK, which doesn't issue identity cards and somehow manages.

You have to bring in loads of other random documents to get a passport, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44408872

To reliably prove your age (e.g. in a store or a concert venue), you have to get a provisional driving license. If you are not qualified (maybe still disqualified to drive, or eyesight problems), tough luck, I'm not aware of any other government-issued photo ID in the UK. Foreigners previously had BRPs, but they are not issued since 2025, everything is electronic now.

There is also the "PASS" scheme where private providers (like banks) can issue plastic cards with photos, but I've heard they are regularly rejected by various venues as proof of age and/or identity, there is no legal requirement to accept them, just a recommendation. And I can imagine non-UK entities care about these about as much as they do about ISIC. TSA was definitely unhappy when I tried using ISIC about ten years ago for a US domestic flight.

If you're lucky with your citizenship. Others get 3yrs or 1yr max. And that's after administrative processing if you're unlucky, which might take years: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2020/11/09/a-us-visa-in-937-days...

And for some passports in the last, say, six years, the probability is significantly increased. There is no official information as far as I know, just some anecdotical evidence from forums.

And before all of that you have to remember all your trips for the last 10 years to enter into DS-160 (you learn to keep a spreadsheet after the first time you do that, UK visas require that as well). And secure an appointment, which (since 2025) must happen in the country of your citizenship, or the country of your residence, which you should prove (sometimes it takes years to get residency documents in some EU countries). If you're unlucky, the waiting time for an appointment might be measured in years too. If you get a waiting time after all, sometimes there are just no appointments available whatsoever with no extra information.

Attending a company event is, of course, not a valid reason to get an expedited appointment. At least not that I've heard.

And I'm sure there are even more tricky things that I haven't heard of.

It works reliably and without surprises. Messages are not lost. No weird errors.

Features: easy to switch devices, including PC. File transfers. Video sharing. Audio-to-text conversion out of the box.

I got mine when I was 12, IIRC. Not a credit, of course, it was a debit card, but not all countries bother to differentiate between the two, it was just a “bank card”. And I believe it had a credit card BIN because all local banks did that to get more in processing fees.

I would read «КНЦ» as «КОНЕЦ», literally “an end” or “the end” (Russian does not have anything resembling articles). Who needs vowels, anyway.

Also, «ВСЕ» feels like «ВСЁ» in this context, I’d translate that as “that’s all”.

It is, because it disables checks in the whole code base. With Corroded, you still have to manually corrode it in selected places.

Multiple threads read and write simultaneously with no synchronization. I call it 'vibes threading'.

So, C++.

I like the term "vibe threading" to describe the the default state of affairs in some (most?) languages. We can extend it to "vibe contracts" as well.

Huh, great to know, thank you. For some reason, I thought the game gets de-listed completely and no downloads are possible anymore.

Happens regularly. And if you don't have a visa for the new destination, well, too bad.

E.g. on December 20 a WizzAir flight 4768 was diverted to Thessaloniki (Greece) instead of its destination Skopje (North Macedonia): https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/WZZ4768/history/2025... . Those with Schengen visas (or appropriate passports) got a bus to Skopje. The rest allegedly waited for three hours and then got returned to Cyprus (EU, but not Schengen), but to a different airport (Paphos instead of Larnaca). So if someone had a car left on Larnaca's parking, too bad.

They use scamming approaches more misleading than airline's and in cases straight up lie.

Would you mind sharing some examples? My only complaints with DB are cancellations and delays. Well, the ticketing might be a bit confusing the first time you realize "ticket" and "seat reservation" are two completely independent entities. Similarly, rules for which train you're allowed to take might be a bit confusing. But I wouldn't call it scamming.

Local trains in Moscow and Saint Petersburg ("elektrichka" with all local stops) may get delayed by a few minutes sometimes, true. But e.g. several trains being delayed by ten minutes because of an ice rain is newsworthy. At least that was the case on several directions I knew about.

Correct, but GOG provides games without _any_ DRM, both in the installer and in the game itself.

I can’t recall a time I’ve encountered an issue that was the fault of Valve versus a developer or publisher.

Does it really matter if it's developer/publisher removing the game from Steam, not Valve? The end result is the same: one can't play.

One does not have a debit/credit card at all (e.g. they're young, or don't have enough documents, or are an immigrant from a sanctioned country).

Alternatively, the card is rejected because "fraud prevention", see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46424584

Or the game is not available in my "account's region", which is chosen arbitrarily based on God knows what.

Might be an estimation of logs storage/bandwidth.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138866 - a person gave permission for IBM to "use JSLint for evil".

We focus on system design, architectural decisions, and reasoning through trade-offs.

Are we still talking about hiring juniors? I hope I misunderstood and it's not about "design messaging app" type of questions. Otherwise we're firmly back in the Leetcode land.

cloning the github repo we used for our interview

Unless it's a very well-known big tech, I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable running any externally provided code during the interview. For all I know, it's RCE with potential to steal cookies and/or crypto.

Sure, there are some protections like “you can’t record the screen without the user granting explicit permission”,

Are there? Any app on Windows screenshot and access camera, microphone, whatever. Aren't permissions for Windows Store-style apps only?

Not a lawyer here.

My advice would be to relax, enjoy Armenia, and assume you are not entering the U.S. in the next couple of years, for any reason. Administrative processing (I assume you actually mean 221(g) refusal) can easily take 1-2 years. The most extreme case I've heard of took 4 years.

In 2016-2020 writing to a congressmen could actually help: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2020/11/09/a-us-visa-in-937-days... , but not anymore. Last year I've heard about some success stories with U.S. courts. Still, it took for one O-1 person about two years from the initial visa interview.

I've also never heard of anyone getting any timeline estimations.

A related small thread with Peter's response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44006801

Compilers are one of the projects where the devs actually can and should expect 100% of their users to be programmers, by definition. Why else would you be running a compiler?

Following some random instructions for "downloading good GenAI software from GitHub".

Open source thrives on collaboration. ... Central to this ecosystem are Codes of Conduct (CoCs), designed to ...

Open source thrived back in early 2000-s too. Although I don't remember anything even remotely resembling Code of Conduct back then, I wasn't paying attention. Was it a thing?

I found that Drupal adopted CoC in 2010, and Ubuntu had one already no later than 2005 (the "Ubuntu Management Philosophy" book from 2005 mentions it).

whose area of expertise/study is subject to export control laws/concerns.

Does that intersect significantly with a typical startup? Maybe machine learning researcher or engineer. Or an information security specialist, like a white hat hacker.

Sounds like the typical "administrative processing". They typically do not give any reason, just that they "need a bit more information" and "the processing typically concludes in 60 days or less". You may be lucky and that is the case, you may be unlucky and it is stuck for years. Even if you're from e.g. the developer of curl from Sweden in 2016, not a nuclear physicist Russia or Iran in 2025: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2020/11/09/a-us-visa-in-937-days...

I've heard about a person waiting for 4 years for their B-1/2 U.S. visa recently.

I haven't heard a single story where any kind of feedback or realistic timeline was provided to anyone, be it the applicant, the employer, a lawyer, a congressman. Not once.

I've heard so. I think my first DB train was around 2019, it was another ICE from Berlin to Munich. They've changed the train, cancelled all seat reservations as a consequence, delayed it for a few hours, I missed my connection in Munich... Maybe I'm unlucky :) E.g. I'm quite lucky with London trains (never had a cancellation/significant delay), but I've heard Cambridge residents would love to have a word with me.

Moreover, I've never heard of a long-distance passenger train being delayed or cancelled in Russia. Granted, I mostly knew about major trains to major destinations from Moscow/Saint Petersburg. Not a single person I knew had a plan for "the train is cancelled/delayed". Like, forgetting ID is more likely. I've heard it's a USSR legacy where passenger trains had much higher priority than even freight trains. Flight cancellations or delays - sure, they do happen.

Local trains even in these major cities do get delayed (around 2-5 minutes is typical, very rarely up to 30 minutes) or cancelled. Delays are in the moment, cancellations are typically announced a day or two in advance, as I was told.

"11 trains are late for at least two hours" makes regional news.

The map claims a journey from Berlin to Bremen takes 2h57m. My last one took 6h 33m. And it was only a single connection in Hamburg. The Berlin-Hamburg ICE got stuck for a few hours in the middle of nowhere, then a few trains from Hamburg to Bremen got cancelled... The usual stuff.

How is it possible that I can write efficient and provably-safe code in C# without a degree in type theory?

Because of two things mentioned in the article just below.

Here we see C#’s first trade-off: lifetimes are less explicit, but also less powerful.

If C# is less powerful, it does not need powerful syntax. One does not need explicit lifetimes in Rust for a long time either, deduction work just fine.

The escape hatch: garbage collection

If C# is ok with not tracking _all_ lifetimes _exactly_, it does not need powerful syntax. Not an option in Rust, by design.

Basically, not all code is possible to write, and not all code is as efficient.

As a neighboring comment mentioned, at least one banned individual seems to be based in the US is employed by Amazon, as per their LinkedIn, including some old posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41933300

They just happened to still use their older .ru email in the MAINTAINERS file.

That's a good example. Thank you.