“Can we move the widget to the left side of the page” is not in the same category as “what is a hash” though?

Sure but as I said, that’s a knowledge question and not an engineering problem to solve. They’re very different and unless you work in software consulting, you’re not gonna get a problem that looks remotely like that from a client.

I mean I’d probably go super generic and say something like “it’s a deterministic function which turns a block of data into a usually smaller block of data, usually for comparing equality to the original block of data” which covers most of the uses?

If you ask a generic question, you’re gonna get a broad answer, and if you want to draw clarifying questions, you need to ask a more complex question and provide insufficient information to answer it. Even then, making that question something you can easily look up online, and you either know or you don’t, doesn’t achieve as much as making the question something that you objectively won’t know, and have to learn on the spot, as that shows your ability to learn new things including things you can look up on the Internet.

With China, UK and afaik US (at least some states) attitude to regulation, a VPN is turning more into a necessity to browse the open internet rather than a tool for people who value privacy though

I’ve been trying to plan a hiking trip and the number of sites, even those without any nsfw or user generated content, that just geoblock the UK because it’s not worth dealing with their government’s shit is impressive