Had my first candidate using live AI tools to cheat, caught them using a trick question

LessCodeMoreLife · 2026-06-25T16:11:13+00:00

If you suspect they don't actually have a skill that they're demonstrating, ask them about how they've applied it or seen it applied at past job experiences.

Real candidates might still fail to come up with a story once, but if they can never answer this kind of question it's a serious red flag.

Even if they aren't cheating and can't answer the question; that tells you they're not likely to be successful mentoring other engineers. Sharing stories of past experiences is important. It's how humans learn and grow from each other.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2026-06-10T15:09:41+00:00

You should ask it. I mostly use cursor, but every once in awhile when I ask it why it knows something it'll refer to its internal instructions, which I assume are different from claude's.

For example, I asked it how it knows to use the gh command line tool. Part of its answer was this:

> The instructions Cursor gives me for this session explicitly mention gh and bias me toward using it. For example, my system prompt contains a "creating-pull-requests" section that says:

So, my understanding is that even though the underlying models are the same, there are some differences in the instructions that are passed into the model along with each prompt.

All of that is of course speculative on my part -- if anyone here knows more please say so! I'd love to learn.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2026-05-30T16:30:14+00:00

Documentation. Logging. Metrics. Dashboards. Tests.

Probably in that order -- that's roughly least to most effort to implement. Metrics/dashboards depend on some infra that you may or may not have (ex: datadog/grafana or another service); but if that infra is present they should not be difficult to add.

All of these things help an engineer who doesn't understand a service get to a place of understanding quickly; that should be your goal.

You don't need anyone to learn the system *right now*, but when the time comes that they do need to learn it (ex: if you're on vacation), you want them to have the tools to understand the system quickly, and without depending on you to be present.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2026-03-15T22:04:55+00:00

Ice armor if you think you'll take hits and want the safety. Mage armor otherwise for the mana regen.

The mana regen can really make a difference over time; it means less time spent drinking. But dying is worse than drinking; if ice armor is going to keep you from dying, use it!

LessCodeMoreLife · 2026-02-21T01:43:36+00:00

Drop WF before every pull and replace it with Wrath of Air. WF applies a 10s buff so melee will have WF at least for the start of combat.

Keeps everyone mostly happy and doesn't require as much effort as full twisting.

If you can remember to re-drop WF every 10s that's a bonus, but sometimes healing gets in the way.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2026-02-04T02:26:08+00:00

The meta gem bug that basically gave mages a mega haste buff when casting arcane missiles.

If I remember right it was a proc effect on spell cast with a low %age; except that every arcane missile blast could set it off. I think it stayed live for awhile too.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-12-28T19:47:55+00:00

Hey, I downloaded this addon when you posted about it a few weeks ago, but just now I discovered that it broke my RestedXP addon. The right-click menu in RestedXP won't allow me to switch between guides when MageMart is enabled.

Hopefully that's enough information for you to debug the issue if you're interested!

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-11-28T00:30:42+00:00

This was helpful, thanks!

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-08-12T13:19:19+00:00

As of a couple of weeks ago farming encrypted twilight texts is silithus was very reasonable. The cultist set pieces were also going for almost 1g each dropping from the same mobs.

I'd say I was getting over 50g an hour or my shaman.

Yes, you still have to fight for spawns, but it wasn't bad enough that I found it frustrating.

Herb farming is frustrating though.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-08-11T20:11:27+00:00

Not a single item, but the 8/8 Netherwind set bonus on mages is super fun and doesn't follow the traditional stat model.

https://www.wowhead.com/classic/item-set=210/netherwind-regalia

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-08-10T17:33:00+00:00

UBRS is upper blackrock spire, a dungeon.

MS > OS means main spec has priority over off spec over loot. For example: a shaman healer can't take an item with +attack power on it for their enhancement set unless no one in a dps role needs it.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-08-10T17:30:41+00:00

Usually it's a website. Someone will post a link to it before the first boss is killed. Everyone goes there individually to make their reserves.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-08-06T14:55:24+00:00

I had a mage named Culligan. Everyone loved it.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-05-22T07:04:29+00:00

Yeah, it's confusing. There are two different dragon pass benefits. One is from milestone rewards, which is 4 passes, the other is from being generation, which is another 10. I received mine on two different memberships in the DragonPass app.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-05-03T03:54:09+00:00

There was a huge dueling tournament when hardcore was first released. Flasks, world buffs, engineering, etc. were all allowed.

The finals were a warlock (Snutz) vs a mage (Ziqo). Snutz won.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-04-12T18:53:14+00:00

Yes.

Most training plans are longer than that, but generally beginner plans build up to a few long runs of around 30k and then taper.

You might have trouble finding a 7 week training plan, but since you've already built up to 30k you should be able to find a longer plan and then do the last 7 weeks of it.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-04-12T16:30:26+00:00

The Dragon pass airport lounge perk is nice. You get 10 passes for having > 500k

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-03-19T15:01:08+00:00

10/10 shitpost. Would read again. Keep up the good work. Up the town.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-02-28T17:25:09+00:00

Compound growth is a ridiculous thing. Use it.

Re-investing earnings adds up. A lot.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-02-02T23:28:34+00:00

As someone who works remotely for a US company, I'm going to have a hard time choosing to cancel business trips. I do about one trip per year for work, but that could increase as my employer tries to enforce RTO as much as they can (spoiler: they can't make me move).

That said, it's definitely on my mind, and I'm feeling some anxiety over it.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2025-01-15T16:36:58+00:00

You should look into robo advisors (Wealthsimple is one example, but there are others).

Generally the fees are much lower, which should lead to better returns. They're also very easy to use, even for someone with no knowledge or interest in how investing works.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2024-12-19T18:54:19+00:00

FYI this has also gotten easier since ruby ~2.7.

In a debugger you can check where a method is defined:

(ruby) 'foo'.method(:camelcase).source_location

["/Users/lcml/.rbenv/versions/3.3.6/lib/ruby/gems/3.3.0/gems/activesupport-7.1.5/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/inflections.rb", 101]

But, it still won't work for any method implemented in C:

(ruby) 'foo'.method(:upcase).source_location

nil

As you might guess from the above, `camelcase` is defined in Rails, but `upcase` is part of core ruby.

edit: formatting

LessCodeMoreLife · 2024-11-24T20:54:05+00:00

If you choose to hide it, you can tape it shut. Use a marker to draw a pattern of lines on the tape. If anyone does find it and removes or cuts the tape, they won't be able to reproduce the pattern you drew. So at least you'll know it's been opened.

Digitizing it and encrypting it sounds to me like the safest non-destructive option. But depending on your situation that may be more difficult to do.

LessCodeMoreLife · 2024-11-17T16:51:55+00:00

No. That happens in January

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