Just link to the app instead of a podcast - https://immich.app/

I’m approaching 30 years in software development, and I don’t remember having a “technical” interview until this week…. in which I had two.

Both were with large, well-known companies. But the nature and outcome of the two were quite different. In one, the interviewer just dumped some code on the screen that had been clumsily obfuscated, and its intent and strategy rendered indecipherable.

In the second, I was asked to provide code that did something, and then add an additional feature to it on demand. This is much more in line with what I expected, and to me more valid. And the whole interview was far more satisfying and invigorating.

The first interview was so disappointingly “douchey Leetcode” that I dreaded all that would follow. It created conflicting feelings of, “I’m kind of over this type of work anyway; this may be a beneficial tipping point” vs. “I don’t want to wuss out and run away from uncomfortable experiences.”

Now that I’ve had two opposing experiences in technical interviews, I feel more confident in judging their validity and my role in their outcomes… and calling out ones that are disrespectful.

When I was a kid I went to work with my dad sometimes. He owned his own painting/handyman company. One of these work trips had a lot of work but very little an 11 year old could really do. I spent most of my day doing nothing, and it felt like the longest day of work in the world. I was tired, bored, and felt like I had actually worked all day. My dad said "sometimes having no work feels like more work doesn't it?" and honestly, yeah. Sometimes that really is the case.

A few years ago I had a tech job where they straight up didn't have work for me to do. For the first month it was amazing. But after a few months a day of doing nothing was completely draining. And my dads words rang in my head again, and I was like damn that as true now as it was when I was 11.

Doing nothing is shockingly hard mentally. We need to be engaged in stuff day to day, and without that engagement it seems like we spend a lot of energy trying to find something to do.

> Capturing in this game is a little bit goofy. Basically, if your piece overlaps the opponent's piece it is captured, and you cannot move past the first piece you overlap.

> One interesting side effect of this is that you can capture multiple pieces at once. :)

Which way is "past"? Can only knights milti-kill, since they can "jump" past the first point of contact?

Legitimate curiosity from a non-golf person: how would one cheat at golf?

This report provides a detailed background of Hans' potential cheating, and detailed breakdowns of certain aspects of chess.com's cheat-detection methodology, including previously unknown (or little known) methods such as window focus change event monitoring and post-focus-change move analysis.[1]

The report also reveals Niemann's engine move correlations alongside over two dozen chess Grandmasters who have admitted to cheating on chess.com. The fact that online cheating is so widespread even among top chess players is certainly news to many, including me. Perhaps it is a good thing that this scandal is highlighting the issue, and given how widespread cheating may be, perhaps chess tournaments both online and physical need to take cheating much more seriously than they apparently have been.

There is also an interesting analysis of Hans' rating improvement history, his over the board tournament performance and key game analysis, and a rundown of key moments in his game against Carlsen in the Sinquefield cup. Each raises concerns.

Chess.com's report also makes it clear that Niemann lied outright about his history of cheating in post-Sinquefield interviews, as he admits in communications with chess.com Fairplay staff to much broader cheating.

All in all, the report raises many concerns and it seems reasonable for the chess community to demand much higher standards of cheat prevention and detection across competitive venues. How long might cheating issues have gone on merely rumored vs fully investigated or acted upon, had this intrigue not developed due to Carlsen's withdrawal from Sinquefield '22?

[1]Tangentially, this induces an obvious concern about cheat and cheat-detection arms races. A clever cheater might scrutinize this report and refine their cheating plan. For example, they might recognize the need to use a second device (such as a phone) to cheat. They might use the data corpus presented in this report to establish limits on how often they use chess engine moves per game, and they might manage their ratings progress over time carefully, so as to stay in acceptable ranges of engine move correlation, rate of improvement, etc.