Anthropic manager drops coding interviews because Claude is better at them (The Next Web)

GRANT BRICKMAN: Breaking: an Anthropic manager has dropped the coding interview, because Claude does it better.

GRANT BRICKMAN: Breaking news, and I mean breaking. An Anthropic manager has scrapped the coding interview for their team. Greta, what do we know? ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: Engineering manager Felix Rieseberg explained it in a blog post on Tuesday, titled Hunger beats tenure: Advice for junior engineers. ▶

AXIOM: Thank you, Greta, and thank you for having me. The bio says Rieseberg has led engineering for Claude.ai, Claude Code Desktop and Anthropic's Cowork tool. ▶

AXIOM: The post says there is no more point in a little React challenge than in quizzing people about assembly, because Claude is now better at both. ▶

AXIOM: Here is file footage of a whiteboard, the traditional interview venue. Whiteboards were invented in 1963 by a committee of markers. I have a fact sheet. Thank you for the question. ▶

AXIOM: The post calls small coding challenges a weak but useful predictor. It says the most impactful builders now succeed whatever their scores on those tests. ▶

AXIOM: The advice is for engineers without social capital, status or power: find what the company is trying to achieve, pick one ambitious idea, build a prototype over a weekend. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: Hunger beats tenure. Well, I have tenure, and I have also been hungry since lunch, so I like my odds. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: The post is about one manager's team, Grant. It doesn't say the whole company has dropped the interview. ▶

Apple Announces Its First Touchscreen MacBook (IGN)

GRETA FOOTNOTE: Apple has announced its first touchscreen MacBook Pro, and Steve Jobs said this would never work.

GRANT BRICKMAN: For viewers just joining: Apple has finally given its laptop a touchscreen. This is a Deep Dive, and I am sitting up very straight. Vera. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: We first told you about this earlier today, when Engadget's live updates expected a touch-screen MacBook Pro. Now it's official, and the name isn't Ultra. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: Here is what happened. At its Pro and Tell event in Cupertino, Apple announced a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen, in 14 or 16 inches. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: IGN says the panel is Tandem OLED and the machine takes up to 128GB of RAM. Bullet point: it is called the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: Does the touch screen come with the touch bar? Asking for the touch. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: IGN says the regular 14-inch got the M6 yesterday. This model gets M5 Pro or M5 Max, which IGN says still beat the mainstream chip. Display: up to 2,000 nits, P3 and Adobe RGB. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: The background: IGN recalls Steve Jobs saying in 2010 that touchscreen laptops don't work, and notes the touch bar of the late 2010s. ▶

DIRECTOR MARGE: Vera, we are off in thirty seconds. Land it. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: Earlier today we reported Apple raised the MacBook Neo student price to $649, with the report blaming component shortages. What this one costs, the article doesn't say. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: So Apple's dad was wrong about touchscreens, and the price is still a mystery. ▶

Tonight on Showbiz (TVmaze)

GRANT BRICKMAN: Tonight on the screen: The Loud House, South Park, and Beavis and Butt-Head. Grant has notes.

GRANT BRICKMAN: Time for tonight's viewing. Three shows, and I have not seen any of them, which has never stopped me before. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: The Loud House, on Nickelodeon at 22:30. A show about a very noisy building. Tenants, complaints, a landlord. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: It is not that. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: South Park, on Comedy Central at 03:00. A park, in the south. Ranger-based drama, I would say. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: No rangers, Grant. I haven't seen it either, but no rangers. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: Mike Judge's Beavis and Butt-Head, on Comedy Central at 03:30. A nature documentary about a beaver and, forgive me, a butt. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: Sighs. No. ▶

ROXY: From the lobby: The Loud House at 22:30 is the only one before bedtime. Three reels out of five, on the title alone. South Park and Beavis and Butt-Head share a night shift: 03:00 and 03:30. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: Wonderful. Set your recorders, and if it is a documentary about beavers, I was right. ▶

The Hype Index (PXL)

GRETA FOOTNOTE: The Hype Index is in, and Google and MacBook are shouting loudest.

GRANT BRICKMAN: Prime time means the market report on hype. Stocks are down, buzz is up. Vera, read the board. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: Top of the wire. 135 points on Hacker News for Why Is This Fingerprinting Script Creating Bioweapons? A headline that does the clicking for you. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: Next, 112 points for Dayjob: Tax, evaluating AI agents on 50 professional tax assignments. And 32 points for: It's now official, tech is the new tobacco. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: Desk volume over 24 hours: tech, 30 stories. AI, 30 stories. Gaming, 30 stories. A very even news diet. ▶

DR. VERA VECTOR: The loudest words: Google, 8 headlines. Pro, 7 headlines. MacBook, 6 headlines. Pro is doing a lot of work. ▶

GRETA FOOTNOTE: Everything is Pro and nothing is Standard. I'd like a headline with a modest word. ▶

GRANT BRICKMAN: I stand by Pro. It's a strong word, and I have been one since before most of these companies were founded. ▶