There's a typo on your link to the two stars image. It should be `/img/two-stars.png` instead it's right now `/img/two-starts.pgn`. For those interested in the image itself: https://jestoph.com/img/two-stars.png
oh boy here we go again
Solving the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge
51–60 of 90 posts
Re: Solving the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of companies who claim to want highly intelligent and autonomous engineers by revealed preference actually want glorified slightly above average ticket pushers. At least by the looks of it, Jane Street appears to be an odd one to genuinely value competence.
There are a lot of incredibly smart non-autists. Or maybe slightly autistic, but enough awareness of the real world that they can be managed.
Good mentorship can make all the difference in the universe.
Re: Solving the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge
#53Solving the puzzle with the assistance of a lower capability LLM model (even though I had access to more) turned out to be fun and good learning experience.
Re: Solving the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge
#54[dead]
Re: Solving the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are a lot of incredibly smart non-autists. Or maybe slightly autistic, but enough awareness of the real world that they can be managed.
The strong affinity between autism and intelligence seems strongest in technical fields, and engineering and computer science in particular. Autism does not seem to be over-represented to anywhere near the same degree in many other domains that are full of intelligent people.
Is this just from your direct experience or do you have data to back that up? Are you talking about credentialed engineering like mechanical or civil engineering or just software developers?
Re: Solving the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge
#56reading the post felt like going down an authentic manic rabbit hole, thanks for sharing your artisanal words @anitil
Re: Solving the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge
#57I know nothing about z3 but it's from Microsoft. Would Google's OR-Tools component CP-SAT also be useful for something like this?
Re: Solving the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge
#58I have used Codex (Sol 5.6 or whatever) to solve this problem. It turns the problem into Z3, then iteratively work through the problems until it figured out the solution. Personally, I did not learn that much from that experience. So I am glad that there's other people working on it as well. I am mostly interested in the techniques used to solve this.
> Personally, I did not learn that much from that experience. What did you expect?
I understand the sentiment, but in a world where these kinds of problems (And problems at work) that can trivially be solved by LLMs; what kind of value can I provide?
That itself is a learning experience. What is even the point of technical interview questions or take home questions? This means that I am now open to hiring completely non-technical person, as long as they have a good personality and management skills more than a competent developer.
Re: Solving the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge
#59I know nothing about z3 but it's from Microsoft. Would Google's OR-Tools component CP-SAT also be useful for something like this?
Z3 is an SMT solver, not a SAT solver. You'd probably be looking for something more like Yices, Bitwuzla, cvc5, etc.
Re: Solving the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge
#60Hi HN, I recently solved the Jane Street reverse engineering challenge [0], and I wrote a blog post on how I reached the answer. It's a moderately technical and (hopefully) entertaining run through of the process. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed doing the challenge (though, as you'll read, it was also quite a frustrating process). My github is on the post if you were interested in seeing a bit more i…
I really enjoyed the writing, cheers. And yes, you may have done it the hard way, but you probably learnt 10x more by doing that. As for what to do next, I used to spend way too much of my late-2000s time on puzzle hunts (particularly the Melbourne Uni one [1]) and this tickled the same part of my brain. Unfortunately they're no longer a thing, but it definitely sounds like you'd enjoy something similar. [1]: https:/…
That particular one may be no longer a thing, but there are definitely still plenty of puzzle hunts going on. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzle_hunt which has a list.