Hmm, in that case, wouldn't it be reasonable to try to somehow throw this extra object under you so that it breaks the surface tension before your fall?
These are not curveballs though. Nowadays it's just another category of interview questions - System Design. There are tons of resources to prepare for this type of questions just like with the Algorithms & Data Structures problems.
The 3K screens are seriously drool-worthy. I don't have a really pressing need to upgrade, but that 3K screen has gotten me wistfully playing with their laptop builder a couple times. It's literally quadruple the real-estate of my current screen (1600x900).
> The vast majority of computers still only have 2 or 4 cores (in fact it has become impossible to find a 4 cores ultrabook, something that existed a few years ago - Vaio z series).
This is entrirely false. Intel i7 current generation models have 4 cores. Are you trying to say that it's hard to find an ultrabook with one of these chips?
If you find one let me know! Even Microsoft's ultra-everything Surface Book ships with a 2 cores CPU. The standard even for high end ultrabooks is 2 cores.
The closest I think you'll come is an MSI GS30. While it's very small and light for what it is, it might be a bit big to really be called an ultrabook and the battery life is pretty terrible if you actually try to use that CPU.
I would support your statement as well. I know three languages: one as my native language, other as my country's only official language, and the last one (English) is my general purpose language, meaning I use at to surf web, to study books, to watch films/series, to code, etc..
Would I learn any other language if I would be born in English society and English family? Doubt it. Maybe some other mainstream language just for fun, but it wouldn't count as bilingual as I wouldn't push myself hard enough to learn it.
As a native English speaker, born and raised in the US, it is a lament of mine that I can't justify the enormous time and effort needed to become bilingual. I guess I could learn Spanish, but why? It would be primarily recreational. And the time spent could almost certainly be more productively used picking up some other useful skill. Maybe I should just do it anyway in light of the more abstract benefits that the article touts.
A side effect of living on a continent separated by two oceans and having one single language. It's far easier and practical in Canada to be bi-lingual as English/French are the official languages.
Having spent a portion of my childhood in Europe I saw first hand how much of a difference their default state of speaking 2 or 3 languages has on a society. Trust me, learning a second language is worth the time.
Where are you from in the US? Im from the Atlanta area and bilingual spanish/english. Most people I know from georgia, florida, even alabama can at least understand spanish just from being around it so much. I really think to not know spanish you would have to actively try to avoid it - especially if you are young and from the city. In atlanta you can easily live without knowing any english, when friends came from south america we always found people fluent in spanish most native (at Starbucks, McDonalds, Grocery Store, shopping, etc).
I'm in Florida now but I did live in Atlanta for a few years and, if pushed, yo puedo hablar espanol suficiente para un conversacion simple. La problema es que no tengo oportunidad para bastante practica para fluente. So, I'm kind of in this half and half limbo where I can understand and speak enough Spanish but not enough that any native Spanish speaker would actually want to have a conversation with me. And for the other person who brought up the buying and selling to Spanish speakers aspect, the vast vast majority of Spanish speakers I've ever came in contact with speak a hell of a lot better English than I speak Spanish so that doesn't really make sense in practice either.
>the vast vast majority of Spanish speakers I've ever came in contact with speak a hell of a lot better English than I speak Spanish so that doesn't really make sense in practice either.
Don't forget that part of the reason that English is well known across the globe is because the US is a media powerhouse. The web is practically english, US blockbusters are seen worldwide, and it's essentially the language of international business.
If the interview is irritated they're not doing it right. In my case I'd just ask the interviewee to explain his or her answer, and if it holds up, make sure to write in the report to the hiring committee that nobody else I interviewed came up with this answer before. That's why it's an interview and not a standardized test.
Coming up with an unusual solution should be a win, though it's of course not required.
Also, in some cases I might ask a slightly harder follow-up where the shortcut doesn't work.
The point is to show off your thinking process. So if you answer with that, how does that show any thinking? It's not like the interviewer really needs the algorithm for Gray codes, so I'm not sure how rattling off an efficient but opaque solution helps anyone. They're not evaluating your memorization abilities.
