skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
#1 exception. You seriously injure/kill another human being on accident or on purpose. Then please call the cops on yourself.
I think it has to do with red tape surrounding the hiring process. There's an essentially infinite number of traits a potential employer cannot ask about (like intelligence), but a degree isn't one of them. So degrees matter because they are the only filter HR departments are allowed to use.
Proposed Treaty Turns Internet Into a Virtual Police State
Another great FriendFeeder!
>Now I am sure a few people are going to say I have drunk the Kool-Aid.

Even if you point this out ahead of time, those people could still be right.

>I think getting a degree still opens many doors, and because of that I followed through with it.

Signals are wasteful.

>but looking back I have no regrets.

Most people think whatever choices they made were the best. That you have no regrets is not unusual.
His story totally reminds me of Jerry Seinfeld's "Don't Break the chain" tip.

see:
http://www.dontbreakthechain.com
http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-pr...
thank christ. now I can actually use my gmail account instead of just forwarding it to other accounts.
You don`t seem to understand the very concept of a press release.
You don't do DVD, torrent etc. Anyway, gimme your email and I will have a FLASH shipped to you.
What's your stance on the question of race and intelligence? It's a hardball, but fits the bill as something that's hard to talk about.

If you determined that there were differences between races, and it was in the best interest of your children to discriminate against certain people, what would you tell them? Would you ever tell them to discriminate against other races if that was truly in their best interest?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence
"Web users getting more selfish" -- Jakob Nielsen
Minority Report-style iris scans are obsolete: 3D body scans for identification
That's strange. I seem to recall watching Sussman write a Scheme interpreter in about an hour.
pg "master of the straw man"

I sure wish he'd stick to technical stuff. The combination of arrogance and ignorance displayed in that essay is a bit too much. I'd be a lot happier if he'd release another version of Arc than to peddle this drivel :(
You haven't even gone to the trouble to erect a straw man. You've just made a groundless accusation and dismissal of pg's opinions.

Forgive me if I don't take your comment seriously.
You actually seem to have stopped reading what Graham said right around "Lies we tell kids". You weren't lied to, and you don't lie to your kids; good for you. Graham also isn't advocate the lies. He's offering an explanation as to why.

You ignore (at least in this post) the millions who were not raised like you, and yet have strong relationships with their parents. You ignore parents who've actually had to answer some really difficult questions ("What's a prostitute?"). You ignore the fact that you can't correct all the lies and half-truths because you won't hear or see everything your child hears or sees.

Even the truth as one "believes" it comes with bias, which one might consider a lie. "I believe in God, but some people don't believe he exists because they haven't had a personal experience of Him" ... the truth, perhaps, but it conveys an unmistakable opinion; how does one's 8 year old truly infer "God may or may not exist" from that? Is that really "truth" if you nudge someone so perceptibly in the direction you want them to go?

It's quite convenient for you that they were right on all the things they taught you. Or were they?
When you have US$1,000, you can buy any item that costs up to US$1,000. When you have US$1,000,000, you can buy any item that costs up to US$1,000,000. When you have US$1,000,000,000, well, there aren't many items that have a price tag like that.
Ayn Rand seems to be (significantly) more popular here than in the general population, judging from a dozen or so times I've seen her come up in comment threads. Isn't that more relevant than your personal, negative opinion of her philosophy?

So, out of curiosity, do these "results in evolutionary game theory" have a source?
I would think an interpreter for CL would be easier to write than a compiler. I'm not sure how CL compilation works, but with an interpreter you already have the parse tree in memory which should make scheme's cool features easier to implement.
Two of the best software engineers I've ever hired (and worked with) did not have college degrees (one only had a GED for high school). But they were both highly talented and came highly recommended from people I trusted.

No, getting a CS degree doesn't guarantee that you're talented; far from it. However, it does show that you have enough aptitude to make it through a CS program, and it lessens the chance that you'll spend my time re-inventing -- or, worse yet, ignoring -- foundational concepts in computer science and software engineering.

Here are some more of my thoughts on the subject of hiring IT engineers:

http://brucefwebster.com/2008/01/10/the-wetware-crisis-tepes...

http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/14/the-longest-yard-reorgan...

(and thanks to dmv for the link to my 'Dead Sea' post, which is what led me here). ..bruce..
Wow, this guy is pathetic.
This is a fascinating discussion, particularly in light of the human brain architecture. Back in school, my prof used to reference the distinctions between the left and right brains in context of alternative computing approaches used by each half. The right brain seems to be more in line with the statistical machine learning approach, effectively a black box data processor producing intuitive results from large quantities of data. The right brain works great in context of normal data distributions. The left brain is the logical brain and can override the right brain. The left brain is about language based reasoning and can handle the novel and unexpected situations or in other words the statistical outliers that give trouble to the right brain.
I suspect the point is that having heard of and bothered to read one of her books, whether you liked or agreed with it or not, probably implies various things about you.

A) You socialize(d) with people who read things that aren't sold in the grocery store.

B) You not only know how to read, but most likely voluntarily read a 700+ page book in your spare time in order to learn/see what it was about/etc...

C) If you can speak about what was in the book, and what you thought about it, you can follow the plot of a 700+ page book, you can understand the points the author was making, perhaps you can intuit the not-very-subtle philosophical and societal messages she was delivering, and you can discuss how you agree or disagree with those messages.

It's no IQ test, but frankly it's probably a much better question than "Do you have a degree?".

At least I'd rather work with people who have read a book like that, and have an opinion on it's content and the author's points (even if they hated the book/points/etc...), than the average CS degree graduate.
Even if there are differences between races in terms on intelligence, how could it ever be in their best interest to discriminate against certain groups of people? There is considerable overlap in the distributions of ability among races, so prejudging an individual based on their particular group's distribution doesn't ever make any sense.

If my hypothetical child asked about that, I would explain what we actually know about what causes differences in ability, such as socioeconomic factors.
Nope, not at all. The reason why I am slightly offended is that people are treating "virtual interviews" with the same seriousness as traditional, face-to-face interviews. There will be no substitute for real human, spoken, face-to-face interviews; more to take out of a person like body language and emotion. Human collaboration within a close environment is crucial to most aspects of business and production. It is nothing more than silly for an individual to feel accomplishment from a job interview via SecondLife; feeling successful, bypassing face-to-face interaction. Though, I feel this position might seem too harsh.
I wouldn't let it stop you. I've applied for and been offered numerous jobs which listed a college degree as a requirement (I don't have one). It helps to have a good resume. And by that I mean one that not only has lots of strong relevant job history, but also one that is well presented/written and really shows off your strengths, while minimizing things that might be liabilities (like the lack of a degree). For instance, my resume doesn't even have an education section.

So don't let it stop you. Also, as other people have mentioned, if you can duck HR, that's great too. If you don't know anyone who works there, find one of their tech folks on a forum somewhere, and work in from that way. Most places give employees hiring bonuses for referrals, so most people will be happy to help you get in the door (assuming they think you're good enough to want to work with you).

Personally, having worked at many places, I generally find folks with CS degrees to be liabilities. Especially if they're relatively fresh out of college. Granted I don't work in areas where you need lots of knowledge about machine learning, or AI, or... I do Java-based web application development.

I've found that most CS programs, by nature of the need to identify topics, and build curriculums and supporting materials, are years behind the real world new technologies. I'd rather hire/work with someone who had spent the last four years building cool things with the latest and greatest technologies. Who knew the real world tips, tricks, and pitfalls of a given approach/language/toolkit/framework. Rather than someone who'd spent the last 4 years in a classroom or a frat house, learning technology that is 1-6 years out of date, and didn't have hands-on-experience with how to handle a Slashdotting, or how to run a secure world facing server/postfix/whatever, or knew that Firefox treats xml response types very strictly and breaks on Google inserted AdSense javascript, unless you force the type to html (while IE and Safari don't care).

Don't get me wrong, there are some smart people in CS programs, or coming out of CS programs, but based on my working/hiring experience, in general, a CS degree is a slight liability on a resume from my point of view.

Real World Experience > College Degree.

And frankly, for the type of work I do, Real World Experience + College Degree usually == Real World Experience.
Hacked a tiny embeddable slide show.
Quite the contrary. Only someone who was serious about appearing humble would try to prevent publicity. While the article might not make him appear humble, true humility does not require the appearance of humility.
If you block JS on OurDoings you'll still see the ads. You'll just get a less slick interface in a few places.
1) Hacker News, Google Reader, Lambda the Ultimate

2) Computer books, Steve Yegge, Paul Graham, Knuth

3) Digg, Google Reader, Facebook

4) Google, Official Docs/Specs (for projects/languages), irc.freenode.net
Or not. Consider:

Email is used for many business transactions, and for other types of meaningful communication between people. So, it can be estimated that email tends to enable profit due to this relationship-building and information-carrying ability.
>"Even the truth as one "believes" it comes with bias, which one might consider a lie."

When it comes to lying vs. "telling the truth" concerning ones beliefs, the [in]accuracy of the belief itself is moot.

Regardless of the justification, the sole purpose of a lie is deception. In PG's essay he points out reasons that we choose to deceive children, and the merits of those reasons are debatable. The author, and her parents, have taken the opposite tactic in child raising, which is admirable (imho).

Whether or not God exists, (which I believe undoubtedly that He does. Downmod if you'd like), when a parent answers a child's question concerning God in a fashion as described above...they are telling the truth. It does not matter one whit if they are right or not. As long as they believe what their answer is, they are not lying. In this particular case, the parents even go out of their way to point out that others believe otherwise, which is profitable for the child as well.

As a side note, I don't believe "What's a prostitute?" is a great example of a difficult question, and hardly worth lying to a child about.
Here we see the demand side of the equation decreasing. If this spreads, is it actually bad?
Even if there are differences between ages in terms of height, how could it ever be in my kid's best interest to think that the average six-year-old is taller than the average five-year-old, even though there are five-year-olds taller than individual six-year-olds? The overlap in these distributions is so considerable that Bayes' Theorem doesn't apply.
There's always something notable, engaging, and refreshing when people are this transparent. You can only tell when they share the hardships.
The general argument on race is ugly in many ways, but I think it serves as a good example of something that is controversial today, not 120 years ago. Whether racial differences exist and whether discrimination is useful in some cases is debatable. What's more important is whether you (I'm sorry about the ad hominem) would lie to your child about something as controversial as race just to be in sync with society.

I'm not saying (or rather, I don't want to say) that race exists and discrimination is good. But it's the closest argument we have to the evolution argument of days past.
adam at adamsmith dottttttt cc : )
I can believe that someone would have the discipline to sit down with a textbook and teach themselves something. I've done it myself (although I wish I could do it more often). But the problem is that it isn't always obvious what parts are important or why. I found in my first year of university I learned a whole lot more CS than I ever did before, not just because I was being taught at a faster pace but also because I had a better feel for what I should learn on my own.
Peter Norvig is "... now taking a short leave of absence from Google to update his AI textbook."

This is news to me, and potentially quite exciting (even if I have just finally acquired my own copy). Does anyone know anything else about this; what sort of new material, etc?
Yes. 12 interviews should be plenty.

"Lowering standards" doesn't work as a sound bite, but if something is too high, one lower it, even if it is a standard. I don't think standards are sacred.

For instance, if you used to be a very desirable mate and had standards to match, but are now less desirable, you should lower your standards accordingly.
Kiss your human rights goodbye.
What's your point? This is a pointless esssay, and ignores the reality and the complexity of the real world. Children are not equiped to understand everything. So simplify.
From the article:

> As to religion, my parents said that they believed that God really does exist and that the Bible is a historical record of man's interactions with a real God...

Just by saying the fact that they themselves believe in god, they are giving the child a reason to bias towards that answer, aren't they? In the mind of the child, the foremost authority on all things occurring in the world around them is their parents, are they not?

The best way to answer this question is simply, "Noone knows", and leave it at that. Any further explanation will only lead the child one or another. Actually, not its not, because even by saying "Noone knows" you suggest a direction of thought, pushing them towards agnosticism rather than Catholicism, or Judaism, or Muslimism, or Whatever-ism. There is no right answer to this question. No matter what, by answering this question you are effecting the way they think about it. So just don't answer the question.
Google Inc. bought a once-nifty newsgroup search engine
called Deja News and let it languish over time to become
largely useless.

Google Groups is largely useless?? That's news to me. I'm subscribed to over 20 groups and use at least five of them on a daily basis and at least ten on a weekly basis.
EXACTLY. The benefit of turning off javascript is small, and the cost is huge.
You pride yourself on "intellectual honesty" and describing the process of cancer accurately, but then say a dying person gains "eternal life". Some might call it less than truthful to define "death" as "life".

I don't lie to children, either. I tell them that black is white, up is down and short is long ... but I do it compassionately.
If you're in public, expect to be identified and recorded. To fight this is to fight the tools that enable us to be better connected. Connectivity is virtual identity - meaning easily copied and recorded.
I would NEVER cater for an audience that willingly switched off javascript. This is like people who refuse to buy any cars that have electronics in them. Javascript is no longer some esoteric or slow - it's supported by 90% of all browsers, and pretty much critical for most of the web.
Or don't have....
"Isn't that more relevant than your personal, negative opinion of her philosophy?"

No, because it's not only a personal opinion, but a statement that Rand's philosophy of rational self interest is logically invalid ('rational' does not imply 'self interest'; the basis on the reflexivity of identity could fairly be called desperate) and scientifically incorrect. Rand's philosophy is incompatible with findings of reciprocal altruism in evolutionary biology and experimental game theory.

"So, out of curiosity, do these "results in evolutionary game theory" have a source?"

Here's one: "Game Theory Evolving" by Herbert Gintis; see Chapter 11.
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Theory-Evolving-Herbert-Gintis/dp...
Was that not obvious from the article?
If you call living in high class hotels reducing consumption then I totally agree with you, And they simply said he is letting his houses, cars... go, but they are not saying he is giving them away. Want to impress? Commit half of your fortune to charity NOW and the second half gradually for the next n years. 3 billion? End Malaria, Darfur or something. In my opinion having 3 Billion in the bank or tied up into businesses doesn't make you so different then having cars, houses and boats that are worth 3 billion.
I thought this was the canonical ML book:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/mlbook.html
Compiling means changing something from one source language into another. The traditional meaning is compiling a high level language into machine code which is then assembled into opcodes. That's not the only way to do it though, Python is first compiled into a bytecode (a more compact representation of the source code checked for syntax errors) and that bytecode is interpreted.

Interpreters are easier to write because it is not as much work supporting different architectures compared to compiling the code. Also, interpreting small amounts of code that will only be run once is typically faster than compiling it and then optimizing and executing it.

Compiling however has much greater potential speedups. A compiler can make a decision at compile time once, and that decision never has to be made again. In an interpreted language that decision might have to be remade on every iteration of a loop.

As you move up from more powerful languages than C, the languages get harder and harder to compile because you know intrinsically less at compile time. In C for example, every variable is known at compile time, so every variable lookup can be translated into a read from some offset from the stack frame pointer, which is very fast. The C compiler will keep a hash table at compile time to keep track of these offsets, but at run time that information is no longer available. In Python, you don't know all the variables that are going to be looked up at compile time, so you have to do those expensive hash table lookups at run time.

In the end, naively generating code for a dynamic and reflective language won't yield that much of a speedup without some serious optimization passes, which was typically not very helpful because the higher level languages were used as glue code to high performance libraries or programs. As people become more interested in using these languages for more intensive work expect to see more effort at compiling then, although most will probably be compiled into a virtual machine bytecode and then compiled to native machine code by the JVM or CLR.
Of course, more companies contribute back to Linux than contribute back to FreeBSD; they're obligated to.

I don't think it's as simple as that. The license has a major influence on the ecosystem around the project, and it is that ecosystem that determines the contributions that flow back to the open source code. The GPL encourages a certain type of ecosystem, and BSD another; that the GPL will automatically yield a healthier ecosystem than BSD is not at all obvious to me.

One of the major differences is that with the BSD license, companies are free to build proprietary products on top of the open source code, which opens up a lot of business models that aren't feasible with the GPL. Take Postgres, for example -- there are many companies that have used Postgres to build a proprietary database of some description. Some of these companies choose to contribute changes back, or to employ Postgres developers full-time, or to hire them as consultants -- mandating that all changes be contributed back would probably mean the companies wouldn't exist in the first place, or wouldn't be using Postgres, which would probably be a net loss for the project. And if a company chooses not to contribute code back? Well, personally that's fine with me, but I can understand why others might disagree.
When I'm making informational web sites, I typically work very hard to achieve a seamless degradation. I wrote my comment after working on a web app I'm developing. I sat there and tried to figure out how I could possibly make this thing accessible to a blind person and I don't think I can without creating an entirely different user interface just for them. The problem with my interface is I'm not just showing an information article that can read left-to-right top-to-bottom. It's more of a car dashboard.

As more and more applications hit the web, I don't think we'll be able to just say that HTML is the web. For better or for worse (there's a whole other argument for another day) we've entered a situation with web applications where there are several players: HTML+CSS+Javascript, Flash, Silverlight, etc. Unless somebody sits down and says "Ok everybody we really need to get a grip on creating an accessibility convention for HTML+CSS+Javascript applications" you're going to have the proprietary folks pushing accessibility as an advantage of their platform. And you know what? They'll be right.

Thanks for the link, I never heard of that website so I'll check it out. For what it's worth, I worked at a company that had some blind people test our sites when they were done nested tables and paid no attention to accessibility, and versions which (at least from a technical standpoint) implemented all the best practices. Frustratingly, they didn't seem to do much better. The content itself needed to be tailored to them because there was simply too much. Like you say, the web of today seems to be built for scanning large quantities of information. Just like you can't take an info-heavy website and throw it at a mobile device because people have different requirements and constraints when browsing from a mobile device, making a website accessible doesn't seem to be just an engineer problem but an editorial one too.
Parents who think this way probably sound like regular parents, but more succinct. They have one more tool to identify harmful people and situations, and they don't have to rely on proxies ("He's from a bad neighborhood") to say what they mean.
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