Um, what if the holidays are hard for you because you are alone?

What if there are other things wired to those switches?

I tend to agree with this line of thinking. If you’re trying to hire an effective problem solver, well the first step to solving any problem is understanding the problem - the whole problem - and often more importantly the context in which the problem exists.

And while my first reaction is to be frustrated with the person asking for a solution to such a vague problem… in the real world problems are rarely clearly stated, and frequently misstated. Investigating the apparent conditions of the problem is always necessary, and generally the fastest path to resolution.

Based on the provided information, there are some switches of unspecified type in one room and a light bulb of unspecified type in another room. There is no power source, nor do we know if there is even wiring between the switches and the bulb. For all we know, the switches and the bulb are still in their product packaging waiting to be installed by an electrician.

The bulb is not controlled by any of the switches in any meaningful manner.

Also, per the problem specification, I am allowed to visit the room with the light bulb only once. I am not allowed to visit the room with the switches, or operate the switches.

The comment in the original image is the most rational possible answer to such an exercise. Poorly stated problems are a waste of time.

*Edit: You know what, scratch all that, none of it really matters.

I’m not messing with an unknown electrical circuit without seeing the circuit diagram and verifying any relevant lockout/tagout. People die from that shit.

This assumes several things to be true, which might not be true:

• power is available/the upstream circuit is on (always a bad assumption to make)
• the bulb is an incandescent type that will generate an appreciable amount of heat in a short amount of time
• the bulb was in the off state before you changed the position of any switches, and has been off long enough to be cold
• the bulb is connected to any of the switches
• the bulb is connected to only one of the switches (parallel circuits are a thing, as are multi-switch lighting circuits)

If any of the above is not true, the conclusion is invalid.

That driver is so cut.

I understand that starting your own business is hard

It’s worse than that, starting your own business is sales.

Are you working in some niche field where you have a good idea of who your customer base is already? Do you know 5 people right now who would buy your product today? Why would they buy from you vs. an established software company that also has a customer support team? Do you look forward to working with these customers to integrate your software into their existing workflow? Do you look forward to auditing your software for cybersecurity compliance?

You need to be able to answer these questions. It doesn’t matter how good a programmer you are or how complex your software product is, what matters is what makes buying from your company better than another.

If that sticker is blue, only the laws of physics can judge me.

xkcd #150

Yes, you are the very bravest of armchair warriors. Congratulations on the virtue signaling.

“roaming scavengers”!

?

Also “two can keep a secret, if one is dead.”

…alternatively, if life hasn’t been good to you so far - which, given your present circumstances, seems more likely - consider yourself lucky that it won’t be troubling you much longer.

…anybody wanna peanut?

Lab 1138

also, there’s a community for more: https://sh.itjust.works/c/youtubeclassics

It’s not just about location, you can figure out usage habits this way:

These response times vary depending on whether a phone is active, idle, offline, connected to WiFi, or using mobile data.

Stable and fast responses can suggest that a device is actively used at home, while slower or inconsistent timings may indicate movement or weaker connectivity.

Over extended periods, these patterns can reveal daily routines, sleep schedules, and travel behavior without accessing message content or contact lists.

With a baseline of your normal usage behavior, I can start to build prediction patterns for what you’ll do and when, and then start analyzing deviations from your normal usage. If I do this for an entire service network I can then start to link up people with similar behavior patterns and build relationship webs.

That kind of information would be relatively easy to sell to advertising businesses. For example, if I’m pushing ad notifications on personal devices (Amazon) then I might want to know what times of day a user is most likely to view and interact with my ad notification. That might be information I’d be willing to buy from a service provider.

The potential uses for such information get darker from there - things like government agencies tracking the behavior of critics and progressives and building relationship profiles for them.

Given the usage patterns and location tracking and credit card and banking records for a given individual, I can pretty much understand their entire life.

Shit… I can’t imagine anything that would prevent a service provider or government from doing this all the time to everyone.

This Week in Tech hosted by Leo Laporte, with a panel of 2-4 guests every week, focused on technology news. Leo has been podcasting since before it was called podcasting. Some of you may remember him as the host of The Screen Savers from TechTV, or The Tech Guy radio show.

Decentered a podcast about the Fediverse with involved developers as guests!

The Delta Flyers Tom (Robert Duncan McNeill) and Harry (Garrett Wang) talk about working on Voyager, with other Star Trek cast & crew as guests. They’ve actually finished all of Voyager (nice backlog to listen to) and started covering DS9, adding Jadzia (Terry Farrell) and Quark (Armin Shimerman) as co-hosts.

risky.biz This one’s more niche, a weekly global cybersecurity news review. Patrick Gray (the show runner) and Adam Boileau (regular co-host) are old experts in infosec with a lot of knowledge and a lot of industry contacts who they interview regularly. In the present there’s a lot of overlap with international politics, so getting an understanding of current events from the cybersecurity perspective is pretty interesting. If you are a professional working in IT or a hobbyist with an interest in computer networking or information security you should be listening to this one regularly.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.