The thing is, what the original article actually describes as "hardware knowledge" in their examples doesn't even touch on electrical engineering. At most it's stuff you'd expect to learn in an operating systems class, which many CS graduates will take. OP isn't close to asking "wtf is flip flop?" it's more like "wtf is select()?".
All of which makes me wonder how the author is interviewing people. I've been working over 25 years and interviewed at least 100 people at all levels of experience. The hardest to interview are college students because they have so little real world experience. But that doesn't really matter.
If the author thinks people should have 8-bit computer experience then ask the question during the interview. If the author wants to ask about operating system topics then ask those during the interview.
I've worked with some interns and new grads that didn't have the skills I thought they should. So I added those things to my list of interview questions.
