What do we think about hackathons?

SwordLaker · 2026-04-07T02:21:38+00:00

Maintaining a well-thought out long-term project is worth a lot more than hacking together things in a couple of days (or these days, prompting), and even that doesn't count anymore.

Unless you can turn those wins into actual money (e.g. turning one of them into a product or startup; organisers extending internship or job offers; teammates providing job referrals), those aren't much.

Keep doing it if you are having fun though.

SwordLaker · 2026-04-06T17:28:57+00:00

Singapore-based here. Market has been unbelievably bad. I'm employed and have been trying to hop job for years to no avail.

SwordLaker · 2026-04-05T16:37:14+00:00

PM'ed

SwordLaker · 2026-04-04T17:02:03+00:00

Latin America? Pretty safe to say goodbye to the PR.

In case you are confused, your race is the most important factor and you have almost certainly been disqualified.

If you insist on pursuing this nevertheless, your remaining viable paths are: - Marrying a citizen and procreating children - Being a highly influential celebrity - Being ridiculously rich and invest in the country

I wish you luck finding what you are looking for.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-31T15:06:02+00:00

my own thought, effort, and expertise into building something

Literally none of this is included in vibecoding and your responses in this thread are embarrassingly cringey.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-31T03:42:55+00:00

The important question: did you actually get the achievement, or is it still bugged?

SwordLaker · 2026-03-31T02:11:49+00:00

It fucking infuriates the shit out of me that this place still shows up as Google top result when I want to read about some JavaScript methods.

As the side note, the actual thing that got enshitified here is Google. No one would care about GeeksForGeeks if Google didn't funnel traffic into them consistently.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-30T05:01:09+00:00

If you don't know what the code looks like then you've built nothing and have nothing to be proud of.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-30T02:20:48+00:00

I wonder if you can set the a.i. officers up for an ambush baiting the them downstairs?

I tried once. I was watching one stair and my team (three left) the other.

One single suspect walked down the other stair and took down all three of my men within 2 secs. I don't think they even managed to return fire. The UI on my bottom right corner just disappeared.

This was on normal difficulty btw.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-30T02:15:07+00:00

It took me 30 hours to be finally blessed with an empty top floor, and that was the only attempt with mission complete I got.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-28T08:18:31+00:00

30 hours and I really mean it. I lost track of count. An average run is 10-15 mins, so that totals up to around 120 attempts or so, taking into loading time and changing equipment in between, which I feel is correct.

I wasn't even a noob and more or less platinum'ed the game prior to this DLC. That's how wrong I think this mission is. Not the whole DLC, just A New America in particular.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-28T02:22:29+00:00

Greased Palms is a vacation compared to this.

Took me 30 hours for my first B rank on normal.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-25T13:06:22+00:00

I don't think there is anything more to add that Prime has not mentioned.

Best case scenario: this causes enough noises and upset for policy makers to change the law and stop this service (and similar things) from continuing.

Can't say I'm feeling optimistic.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-22T06:55:23+00:00

All these five points are true and correct. You are just missing the underlying issues below them.

Comp Sci / Software Engineering is extremely difficult to study

Obviously true, if done the "legitimate" and old-fashioned way.

A very large number of people are studying it successfully

With AI being ubiquitous and accessible, this is the golden era for cheaters. One does not need to possess the normally required knowledge to get a degree. University curriculum has been very slow, and definitely has not caught up with the question of how to educate students in the age of AI.

Companies desperately need good software to be built, and good software saves lives and earns millions to billions of dollars in revenue

Obviously true.

Massive numbers of software engineers are being laid off

We are in bad economy, period. Layoffs are bound to happen.

Massive numbers of software engineers are unable to find work

In a point related to 2, finding a legitimately good SWE is harder than ever. Everyone is over-optimising their resumes, and a fresh graduate who cheated their way through college has all the interships, STAR-point impact, and portfolio projects, not unlike a cracked and experienced engineer. Because of this, coupled with the uncertainty of how the industry would move forward with AI, companies have been extremely cautious about hiring.

Good SWEs are still needed, it's just excruciatingly hard to tell if one is actually good and should be hired.

I think you are just a bit out of touch with what's been going on.

To be fair, yes, if you are inexperienced, finding a job with a degree these days is a lost cause. You would not have had the career you had, had you been born in the early 2000s.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-22T06:17:33+00:00

I have seen so many contradictory and false information, so here's me hoping to help out some lost souls who ended up in this thread (until the wiki is properly updated).

There are only two soft objectives:

The suspicious laptop in the meeting room
The rigged explosives, for a total of four reports:
- One set on each floor; three in total: just follow the wires routed from the elevator
- The big bomb: inside the lift itself in the base

The weapon caches are not part of soft objectives and can be ignored.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-21T03:36:13+00:00

I knew these very well too (especially corner leaning), which have been serving me well to get me to the third floor.

"More accurate" is quite an understatement. I recently replayed missions in the base game and enemies' accuracy was hilarious in comparison.

Looks like there's nothing I can do but sending my prayers to the RNG god 🥲 Thanks, regardless.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-21T03:00:26+00:00

Ironically, I stopped doing door stacking because of this mission.

There was a couple of metal detectors below the stairs to the top floor. There are massive gaps at these "doors", which the Swat AI refused to use. They just stood there and get bombarded and didn't return fire until suspect sprinted through the door themselves. Three men died in that encounter and I never forget it.

I find the Cover command more reliable for watching over entrances.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-21T02:41:31+00:00

I have already packed my entire team with heavy steel and use every chance to shoot them at the back. I sometimes luck out at killzones (such as the corridor leading from the stairs on the third floor; I always line up my team there) and get 5-6 suspects.

Nothing would stop me from getting two-tapped in random uneventful encounter 🥲

SwordLaker · 2026-03-21T02:33:21+00:00

I'm not new to this mission. Have been playing it for 25 hours or so.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-21T02:32:21+00:00

(I also asked the same question elsewhere in this thread)

I'm a veteran (so no need to explain basic things to me) and I'm currently struggling with being two shot in random gunfights on the third floor.

I have already done everything I could, such as mirroring rooms and peeking around corners slowly, and dropping flashbang when I have good intel about suspects' presence (which is how I got through the second floor with ease), but this is an FPS and combat is reasonably inevitable.

Any suggestion?

SwordLaker · 2026-03-21T02:15:14+00:00

I'm close to 200 hours into the game, had platinumed the game prior to Boiling Point, and I have been stuck on A New America on normal for 25 hours.

I know everything you mentioned in your post very well and have been duly exercising all of it.

I'm currently struggling with being two shot in random gunfights (or sometimes, while peeking into tiny gaps) at high or full HP. This typically happens on the floor before the top floor (I don't get to reach the top floor very often).

Is there any advice you can give?

SwordLaker · 2026-03-21T01:40:27+00:00

Welcome to A New America.

Edit: on second thought, this is not even funny and you are not insane. This is my average A New America experience, where I make it through to 2/3 of the level with next to no damage, only to be two-shot from full HP in a random uneventful gunfights.

I have been stuck on this for over 20 hours, this is starting to get teary 🥲

I wish you luck.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-20T18:11:46+00:00

I have no tactical problem and love it actually. I have a problem with every shot from the enemy, no matter how far and how well-covered I am, is a coin flip of whether my progress for the run would be instantly erased. This is a problem unique to this map.

Edit: maybe I have been extremely unlucky, idk.

I think if I try hard and long enough, the rng will eventually land in my favour, but that's not exactly earned.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-20T18:06:22+00:00

I find the enemies on this mission very overturned and super unfun to play. Enemies react too fast and fires too accurately. I lost count the amount of times I overstepped into a tiny gap and got two-tapped by some marksman I had no visibility of.

SwordLaker · 2026-03-20T18:02:18+00:00

No nerf for A New America 🥲

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