skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: Critique this hiring procedure
I've been thinking about hiring processes in General and I think some of the problems that they face are a result collapsing a complex question very hastily into a binary decision.

Therefore I propose a "multi-layered" decision process, where the final step is made automatically. (This is obvious and I know it's probably not new, if your company tried this in the past I will be happy to hear about it)

First essential rule: "if the candidate has the highest amount of points and is willing to accept the offer, s/he gets hired"

Now, unlike other systems which try to prescribe, this system attempts to describe.

We define "a reason" as any true, legal (as in non-discriminatory) statement about the candidate that is precise enough.

Each reason can be assigned a number of points (negative or positive). The interviewer has complete freedom to assign as much points as he wants to any reason but is advised to respect previous jurisprudence and to justify himself in the cases where he goes against it.

Valid reasons can range (just examples) form:
"S/he got Y GPA in University X" to "s/he didn't say hello at the start of the interview"
Invalid reasons are for example "unprofessional attire" this is invalid because it is vague. Reasons need be blunt and precise. "S/He wore X and Y" should be valid.

Claim A: this makes the hiring process more traceable and open by providing a paper trail

Claim B: this fights part of the unconscious bias. By requiring interviewers to think and write down reasons. They can examine more critically their decisions.

Claim C: this helps control for overreaction. Assigning helps insure that the effect of each reason is reasonably proportional. I think many would be ashamed to write (-50) for just not saying hello but I worked with people petty enough to reject for less.

char limit, 1/2 to be continued at:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16105130
Thanks for clarifying (and I agree with the exchange rate complaints)

China and India have strong currency controls in place so your problem might not be solvable by other providers

Have you tried Xe?
> "Sure they exist, but we don't want to talk about it...the first step is acknowledging that a difference exists"

Reminds me of the suppressed discussion about males having a slight preference towards things while females having a slight preference towards people which caused so much of a stir at Google.
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Actually, it would be impossible for there to be more firstborns than subsequent-borns (barring death) because siblings require 2+ people, of which one and only one will be firstborn.
I think we are talking about different things. Half your links have nothing to do with Flash or Java Applets (.net, XAML?).

You seem to be talking about new platforms that may derive some part from the old. I'm not saying WebAssembly won't be used for new platforms as that's sort of the whole point of it.

What I'm saying is that WebAssembly won't bring back people making Flash .swfs or writing classes derived from java.applet.Applet in any mainstream way. In that sense Flash and Java Applets are dead. Maybe someone will hack something together that allows you to run them, but that won't bring the developers back to the old platforms.

If Oracle or Adobe announce something, maybe the industry will jump on board, but currently I don't see anything in your list that makes me change my mind about Flash and Java Applets being dead and not coming back.
2/2

Step 2: peer-review
The highest candidate is selected, interviewers exchange notes and are asked to:

* check and discuss if their colleagues reasons’ are valid and reasonable (for example "the hello" reason might be seen as too petty by some, and will be discarded)

check if the point values are reasonable
(Checking old similar data to flag outliers is a possibility)

check if some of the reasons presented by other colleagues apply to their own candidates. For example, if the "hello" reason was not discarded and your candidate didn't say hello you must apply it to him too.

*Interviewers are asked to bring more focus on the current best candidate's reasons.

If after a peer-review round, the best candidate changes, another round is made or shorten the list and re-interview.

If it does not change, the best candidate is offered the position.

Claim D: this helps smooth out harsh or lenient interviewer bias.

Claim E: this process if well documented should be a valid and easy defense against allegations.

Data Analysis on hiring decisions becomes way more interesting. I'm sure there are tons of trends you can seek out.

Claim F: this allows an earlier detection of discrimination. For example if you find that an interviewer or a committee always removes points from a certain group for a subjective reason more than others in the company. It might be an early warning sign that a problem need be addressed.

Claim G: this allows for a higher quality debate on controversial issues like sexism and racism in hiring.

Machine learning can be used to give suggestions to interviewers about the amount of points to give for reasons. (They should be suggestions no decisions to avoid the pitfalls the lost nuance that classic machine based decision might suffer from)

Example: a fairly easy one is that after a high enough number of universities and GPAs is received one can aggregate the point values into scores that take into account the difference of grading and quality between universities. This might help decide if GPA x in Y is better or worse than GPA z in C, a very hard question to answer fairly if we didn't have the data.

I think this method offers a more traceable, open and perhaps fair way of hiring without suffering from the lack of nuance that traditional automatic hiring suffers from.

Problems:

- Money: this process might require more man power.

- Tooling: to be efficient this process requires tooling and automation

I would be happy to hear your ideas, improvements and experiences with similar systems. I think the idea of this system is very similar to that of a neural network.
Those server costs do not pay for themselves. Me personally, I’d likely just block them altogether.
I completely fail to understand how that's a defense. Whether you're an asshole or not is exactly defined by your reaction to similar situations. The author talked down to people who wanted to use his service and treated them like toys even after he found out they didn't mean him harm.

This post left me with nothing but bad impressions for the author and for Browserling. At some point I wonder whether a middle school bully was writing the post.
Well it IS wierd, because you would assume than that 'eldest child' principle would get at least linearly worse the more kids there are in a family... So I must be particularly lucky, OR perhaps we don't really have good numbers for the other end of the spectrum, regarding 'youngest child' general performances?

Or, again, perhaps there is a large part of cultural bias ("eldest/heir" of the family being assumed as better) so given more attention/resources... And that since I'm from a family with a single mother (who didn't have time/inclination for that) I was spared that?

In any case, I think making up "exists and are strong" conclusions without taking into account more parameters is simplistic at best...
> Now it's time for Google to lock users in and milk them.

I don't think Google is remotely at that point, and from their competitive perspective they're still winning by letting their open-standards-straw reach all the way across the room and drinking Microsofts/Oracles milkshake.

And for a tech behemoth with Billions of dollars flying around and fingers in all the pies I think Google has one of the, if not the, best track records in standardization. Concretely, when comparing their products at the personal and Enterprise with their competition they're consistently more open...

I think not having a massive clump of RDMB revenue helps them think freely about problems :)
The drawback of any survey driven study, right?
The Timecrimes, brilliant piece of art.
It doesn't matter. The playing field itself allows for shitty practices, and people/companies engaging in those shitty practices get more profit than those who refrain from it.

As long as shitty practices are supported by the browsers general population uses, nothing will really change.
I don't have precise statistics, but I'm basically worthless before 14h, and start getting productive at around 17h...
"High Sierra 10.13.2 Supplemental Update. This reuses the 10.13.2 version number. "

tsk tsk
Since birth order is immutable, what would you gain by a longitudinal study? You still only get one data point per person.
The reason is probably that the first child gets the most attention, right?
That's true, but probably only because writing games and animations in js is sooooooooooo much harder than doing the same in flash.
So your point is that we _should_ JavaScript?
HN is not a hive-mind, stop trying to make it one and get off your high horse. The Facebook messages didn't seem like they were from people who thought they were entitled to anything, I saw two people trying to ask him politely, with sir and please, and others trying hard to spell weird app names.

People were using the trial feature browserling provided on its main page and not breaking any terms and conditions while doing so, so not freeloaders. Browserling is entitled to blocking these users or limiting the trial feature and the Facebook messages were from the time when they were not trying to monetize by asking for $0.10

I know sweeping generalizations about a group of people most certainly less fortunate than you are easy and you definitely are entitled to your opinion but don't try and label it as something "HN thinks".
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Danny Boyle's "Sunshine" is excellent. It strays away from scifi in to horror a bit occasionally, but the premise is great and the science is accurate. Dr Brian Cox was scientific advisor to the film.
It did. The data set is biased towards being older sibling about 3:1. If the statistical distribution is fully shown then it could be some sort of an argument.
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"I'm sorry, I can't support this use case so I'm blocking Jio phones" is fine. "You have to pay for this service" is fine. "Please tweet to use the service" is fine.

Saying "please tweet to use the service" and then blocking people anyway is lying. Making fun of people for doing what you asked so they can fulfill one of their needs is scummy. Telling people to Tweet to increase their chances in a lottery and then not actually doing it is also scummy.
Or is it a physiological change that occurs in the mother after giving birth; one that doesn't change much further on subsequent births? Death rates due to complications after childbirth were quite high during 99.999% of our history. It's not out of the question for there to be an evolutionary adaptation that puts a little extra oomph into the firstborn in case the mother dies before having a chance for a second, even if it caused a higher risk of death (due to giving the embryo more of the mother's resources in vitro) to do so.
Fantastic! I had a need for a SID synth years ago, and only found a 32-bit VST one, which was flaky ... and worked every less well when bridged to 64-bit for Cubase 9.

Any chance of an Atari 2600 one?
How is it not the similar? In both instances, people explain away the terrible deeds of a person by saying they are incentivized to do x,y,z instead of talking about whether it is right to do so and focusing on the pain it inflicts on people.

Trying to force anyone out of a home so you can make a buck puts their livelihood and safety at risk. You can't just excuse terrible behavior because people are greedy.
> the first step is acquiring sufficient high-quality data and reproducing findings

I agree that good data is a pre-requisite. An online survey of blog readers isn't going to upend psychology as we know it, but Scott's findings of a heavily skewed numbers of first-borns in the survey probably can't be explained as just "online survey crap." The only "online crap" explanation I can think of is if the "first born" box was pre-filled and people changed the response for their number of siblings but didn't change the pre-filled response for birth order. This unbalanced first-born ratio is something that could be looked at in a bigger and more rigorous survey.

> some want to talk about it prematurely because it speculatively supports conclusions that fit their agenda

We have to talk about it otherwise we'll never get any data- I'm not advocating policy decisions based on incomplete research, I'm advocating discussion and follow on research. You can't do research without discussing ideas ahead of time.

> yet here we are, hijacking an interesting if incomplete study for your own purpose

I didn't hijack anything. I was making a comment that stayed on topic and is related to the post.

BTW, I'm a statistician, and have a pretty good understanding behind the science of surveys. I'm admittedly not an expert in psychology. From the HN guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
It’s on mobile only AFAIK.
> But these demand strong effects of parenting on children’s later life outcomes, of exactly the sort that behavioral genetic studies consistently find not to exist

Would like to hear more details to that claim. When ever I read about genetic factors (For example on the topic of depression), I keep hearing that without the environmental factors the genetic indicators loose their predictive power. Genetic factors in behavioral science make a person more effected by environmental factors, but alone the genetic factor tend to have no effect.

To take the explicit example in the article. Is there an measurable effect in adult life that correlate to the amount parents focus and dedicate time to them as child? In rats I have heard enough studies to show a very strong correlation between stress in adult life and time that the rat got groomed as young by the mother. Could it be so simple that parents spend a bit more time/focus with the first child during the first few years, while the second child receive a bit less since there is now two children and the parents are a bit more experienced and feel more secure in parenting. While rats and humans are not identical, it is a strong hint that "parenting style" might carry an effect into adult life.

Source: https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/2016-plomin.pdf

Although heritability estimates are significantly greater than 0%, they are also significantly less than 100%. As noted earlier, heritability estimates are substantial between 30% and 50%.... No traits are 100% heritable (e.g., Plomin, 1989; Turkheimer, 2000).
AMP is a standard that restricts webpages to a subset known to load very quickly, which is especially useful if you have a mobile device, or are in a country with poor internet such as in the USA.

That's not all it does. No-one would object to it if that was all it does.

The more important part is that it hijacks content and serves it from other servers, and requires including a js file from a large corp in every page. That's a massive vulnerability waiting to happen, but it also gives complete control of the web to whoever controls that js.

They need to ditch the requirement for js, and ditch the requirement for framing with Google junk around pages. The web is an open ecosystem, that's its strength.

Also, google should not be using their influence in search to push changes which are profitable for them - that's abusing their monopoly position.
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> One posted 5 years after the flurry is unlikely to get many votes.

Interesting point - perhaps a hybrid scheme to decide the ordering of the answers, that balances upvotes and submission date.

It would need to be carefully tuned though - for some questions, answers will age badly ("What's the best way to do parallel stream processing in Java?"), but for others, they essentially won't age at all ("Why is there a small numerical error in this floating-point calculation?").

Perhaps it could be tuned by tag, as a means to estimate how the answers will age.

> How about bad information not showing up in my search at all?

You don't want the system to be overly sensitive to undeserved downvotes.

> Curation isn't always bad.

Of course, but traditional curation isn't on the cards simply because of scale - StackOverflow isn't like an academic journal - and we're whining about a system that works incredibly well.

Look at YouTube comments, or Yahoo Answers, and you see what a shitshow it can be when the Internet tries to have a conversation. It's a small miracle that intellectually worthwhile forums like this one can ever work. StackOverflow does a lot right.
It is possible that like many other effects, firstborn effects are subject to law of big numbers. (Or some statistical distribution other than Gaussian.)

Alternatively birth distance (time between births) or age of mother are the actual correlate. We do not know.
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I sometimes use Excel (a Swiss army knife..) to literally build scripts based on small pieces that I can test individually. Having a specific spreadsheet for it would be awesome!
On the slim chance that someone here wants to re-implement the unmodified Kneser-Ney algorithm[0], the presentation of it by the book does not account for unknown tokens in the query not in the vocabulary. I extended the recurrence to its natural closure including unknown tokens here [https://github.com/jhanschoo/HMMTagger/blob/master/readme.pd...]. A straightforward task, but it might take you an hour or two (probably more) otherwise to obtain it and prove its correctness, seeing as I couldn't find an extension in a Google search nor is it described in the original paper as well. I believe that it would likewise be straightforward to extend this to modified Kneser-Ney as well.

[0]: The modification of using multiple discount values due to Chen & Goodman is regarded as a more well-behaved smoothing, and more popular today.
I'm amazed hn users are bashing Peter for wanting to monetize the trafic. This is not a cheap service to run. He has to raise entire virtual machines and he's getting ddosed by thousands if not millions of people.

The fact they are indian is totally irelevant here.

Maybe making them tweet stupid stuff was a mistake but hey, we all do mistakes, that doesn't make us assholes. You don't know the relationship he has with his competitors, maybe they are in good terms. Why are people judging him this easily?
Colossus: The Forbin Project

Before Skynet ...
And Then There Was One (2001)
How so? Filesystem operations are (or can be) atomic too.
i hadn't seen pixlr before, it's beautiful. But canva has been making inroads in the enterprise space. Difficult to displace once all your digital assets are managed by a service for multiple designers. Then they provided a print service too.

They're executing really well in key areas.
I suspect the frames were reserved for future patron portraits
I am personally of the opinion that cryptocurrency swiftly killing off the (central) banking industry would be to the great benefit of humanity. The sheer amount of electricity, human energy, infrastructure, material and real estate it wastes is an environmental disaster.
There are a couple TV shows that every sci-fi fan should see: Firefly and more recently The Expanse.
Silent Running - brilliant (for its time) special effects
If they own another phone why do they want to access WhatsApp on their cheapo ones so fervently?
The article doesn't make it clear what their data source for this is - but I'd have thought that would have a big impact.

If you measure the time I commit code, you'll find the most happens just before I go home every evening; if you measure the time I mark tasks as complete in a task-tracking system it's at a scheduled daily stand-up meeting. So different data sources would show different results.
What looks particularly funny that it's OpenFaaS examples, such as in this post: figlet service. Several years ago it was simple binary, which you could invoke in console to produce fancy-stylized string. Now, same functionality require running figlet function-as-a-service inside Docker container inside Kubernetes cluster. I understand, that's merely an example, but nevertheless.
In my case it looks broken in both, I can't select anything...
Suppressed? If only! It was all over the news, we didn't hear the end of it for several weeks, and it still crops up every now and again.
> If I wrote an implementation where state comprised two immutable lists for the stacks and an immutable map for the heap, wouldn't that capture the semantics of words in as a pure function?

A good point that slipped my mind. One can interpret Forth as modifying a stack, or, just as valid, interpret it as mapping one stack to another.

Implementation detail is just that.
Gattaca - a beautiful moving film with wonderful music (by Michael Nyman) about genetic engineering, discrimination and sheer determination.
You can check this article that goes in great details about the V8 engine (+ a bit of info about others) - https://blog.sessionstack.com/how-javascript-works-inside-th...
Or more likely there simply wasn't sufficient data on distances or the region was not considered important enough.
I think some of the things done here are in poor taste but I think overall he's coming out net positive impact on the world. Providing a good service for poor people in India and the Cameroon to communicate.
You must run in much better circles than I do. Nevermind a naive user, the average users I know wouldn't know how to disable javascript, or whitelist sites, or that there even were sandbox settings in the OS.

Some of the older people I know can't even correctly choose between between writing a text message, and a facebook post.

If you think you are a typical example of a naive user, I would hate to see what you expect of the average user.
Perhaps I'm missing something but why do we need a "console"?

Why can't we just post these search-engine related settings in a special file on our servers?

That way, we don't have to manage 10 consoles for 10 different search engines.
Check out [1] - Top 10 Replicated Findings From
Behavioral Genetics

In particular, "all psychological traits show significant and substantial genetic influence" mostly contradicts your comment, also "the heritability of intelligence increases throughout development" - i.e. environmental factors (parenting) matter when kids is young, but less so when they turn into adults.

[1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/2016-plomin.pdf
When I googled I found more details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/7218gh/templeos_crea...

> Despite the mean spirited attention he gets, he does have a following of people who seem to genuinly feel for him, and want to do nice things for him. One thing his followers did which at least seemed well intentioned was buying him a drum set. Terry likes to use drum sticks, but didn't have a set, so a gofundme was set up and he was bought some drums.

> But shortly after receiving the drum set, Terry vanished off the interenet for a couple weeks. Eventually, this note was posted on his website:

>> I got kicked-out of my parent's house. I got in a fight with my Dad, went to jail then mental hospital.

>> I'm adapting to being homeless. Hope to get a car to live in but no loan yet.

> At some point after posting this note, he was able to get a van, which he's now living in.