skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Articles like this should really lay to rest the idea that there are rational market forces at work behind compensation.

One thing the article doesn't go into is how insanely easy it is to game this system if you've the knack for standardized exams. The LSAT requires no prior knowledge, and simply tests how quickly you can work with logic in your head. With a 4.0 in basket weaving, and a 175 on the LSAT, you're almost guaranteed admission to Harvard Law with a $160k+bonus job waiting for you at the other end.
A lot of these are quite awesome.

I think my favorite has to be the bicycle store one, since it's completely functional (can be used under a slash in the tire to prevent a tube from coming through). It also means that you're all but guaranteed to have it in their wallet.

Ultimately the best part of lot of these is that even though they will costa lot, people will hang on to them. The downside is, that everyone will want one...
All the time I see networking having the best value over time when it comes to hiring. Meritocracy only looks good on paper, reality is completely different. Good grades and interesting hobbies? They say - fuck that noise. Firms simply wont take a chance with you if they got someone 'familiar' waiting in line. Get over it and exploit it.
Great Gadget Designs of the 60′s and 70′s
I'd really like to thank sendwrite and cole for such a generous promotion.
Except that admission to Harvard Law doesn't guarantee a $160k+bonus job these days! And my understanding is that being in the top of your class (or top 50%) in law school is more difficult than a 4.0 in basket weaving.

(I agree with your main point - law school admissions selects for completely "gameable" things).
Adidas Set To Launch $1 Shoe In India
You're fine, off.com doesn't have MX records.
It's an ok solution for me, but unfortunately I think most users will just click "ok" so they can see their friend's link without realizing what they're actually agreeing to.

I think that's what Facebook wants: "making the world more open and connected"... at all costs. They're constantly pushing the limit of what level of openness users will accept. It's going to backfire.
There are four key components that every business must have to succeed:

1. Products (more products are better up to a point)
2. Sales + Marketing (more sales are better)
3. Efficient Distribution (less cost is better)
4. Research + Development (leading to more value and higher prices)

The genius of Apple is that they've put together three more or less separate companies into a totally integrated system.

Apple USA handles points 2 and 4. Apple Foxconn handles point 1. Apple Global Retail + Online handles point 3.

Apple 1.0 originally struggled with distribution since they had to compete with all other manufacturers for shelf space.

The return of Jobs led to Apple 2.0 and the creation of their OWN distribution channels. (Note: this only applies to their bigger markets, in the smaller markets it's more efficient for them to NOT have official Apple stores.)

Their position in the market is, for the time being, unassailable given that:

1. Their giant stockpile of money and established supply chains gives then unbeatable efficiencies. 2. They have top design/marketing/sales and R&D talent and massive IP protection. 3. They have an ever growing list of retail stores to distribute their products 4. They have some degree of consumer lock-in via their app stores.

The only way they can lose, at the moment, is if they stop coming out with innovative products.

Other tech companies have retail stores such as Sony. But they are a business/engineering firm with an endless list of products. They've got something like 16 46" TV models alone. Their retail outlets can't possibly house their entire product line, making them extremely inefficient.

Japanese companies are also fond of purpose built single-use type devices that are poorly integrated together, rather than generic multi-purpose computing devices like Apple.

Sony should really throw away 80% of their product line and keep only the highest selling gadgets, then hire some new marketing and r&d talent to start building better things that people actually want. Otherwise they are toast.
utterly clueless; the NeXTdimension didn't do video.
Only with Verizon plans.
I should add that this topic made me take a second look at giant squid data (what can i say, i think they are really interesting creatures). It does appear that large giant squid have been found dead but never seen alive or caught. Those seen in a well documented manor or caught have been around 25ft in length max, while the expected maximum size is around 60ft with the largest dead specimen being about 59ft long, although that was in 1878 so i don't consider it overly reliable data.
Recent Report Shows That Casual Gaming On Portable Consoles Is On The Decline
I prefer to have my own domain, I just use nameofthesite@example.com, and set it up to catch-all.
The original paper

http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3328

was previously discussed on HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3260445

and Matt Leifer's blog post

http://mattleifer.info/2011/11/20/can-the-quantum-state-be-i...

is the best explanation out there of all this. The short answer is that the authors have ruled out an interpretation of quantum mechanics which very few experts believed in to begin with. Nevertheless, the tenability of that interpretation was previously unknown and this paper highlights exactly what is necessary for an epistemic interpretation of the wavefunction. That make this the most important result to come out of the quantum foundations field in a few years.
http://simson.net/hacks/cubefire.html
Action Business Brokers
Hrm ... interesting thought: is a market dependent on financial services analogous to one dependent on natural resources?

Particularly if those financial services are extractive in nature?
OWS is a protest movement, the core of which is against corporations buying laws. The corporations do this because they want to protect their inefficient business models by enshrining their way of doing things into law. For example, content owners wish to censor the internet so they can keep selling consumers crap, while banks wish to tax everybody when they make a loss on their trades.

OWS is not anti-business, it is anti-corruption, and there's few things more damaging to progress than corruption.
>I agree with your main point - law school admissions selects for completely "gameable" things

that in reality is equivalent to "for the ability to game the rules/system" - which seems pretty valid criteria for a law school selection
"Google's hiring guidelines explicitly stated that we should only add people smarter than we were. That's why we started running a line on the homepage that said, 'You're brilliant. We're hiring.'...

Larry and Urs were willing to waste a few hundred million impressions to reach the dozen or so people they might consider hiring...

The page at the other end of the link had been written entirely by Jeff Dean[1]"

-From "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee #59" by Douglas Edwards (July 2011)

[1] http://labs.google.com/people/jeff/
Why the downvotes? I find this analysis useful. Is it incorrect?
To some extent, it doesn't really matter what they select for. If anything, I think they're selecting for an ability to figure out the rules and "play the game."

i.e. if you can't figure out a way to work the system to get into a top school and get a > 3.5 GPA, you're not going to be able to navigate client politics on a consulting project. Similarly, if you can find a way to make yourself seem really interesting on your resume, you'll probably be able to present yourself in a polished way to a VP at your bank.

If you're a hacker who doesn't want to "play the game" (i.e. you skip college, or go to a state university for free), it's likely that you're not going to be a good fit for these kinds of big firms.
How to Use Entertaining Videos to Get Solid Traffic
You should look at the first comment. Not 'everyone works like this', some fields can do perfectly meritocratic hiring. (Heck, nothing says that the subjects of the survey couldn't do hiring a little more systematically and not completely ad hoc.)
I'm not a "designer", so the way I use photoshop is potentially not the best, but it works. I usually design my website on photoshop (after manual sketches) in order to be able to try different prototypes fairly quickly. I don't use the splice tool, but rather generate pictures that I need manually. (e.g. 1x20 image is enough for a background, logo in png if need for transparency etc..). Then I jump to css and build up the design.

As far as php/mysql vs. Python/Django vs. RoR... I would suggest sticking to what's most comfortable for you to learn fundamentals. But once you know your basics, it's much easier to jump from a technology/language to another.
I think this might just be the answer to the constant annoyance of switching focus between the browser, the editor and the console. Why didn't I think of that before?

With all the effort we put into learning key combinations, why not bring the feet into it as well?
Solar Gadgets Wholesale, China Solar Products for Home
so how much is an affiliate payout on 1¢ phones? ;)
Don't worry about credits. Give something back to the amazing online community. If someone claims it is his image? So what? He probably is a very sad man and you probably can prove that it is indeed your picture. Stop worrying about these petty things.
Ask HN:  Can we end the "anyone who can code has a job waiting for them" meme?
How many of you honestly know of a job available for anyone who can crank out some interpreted code and knows HTML? Or even positions open to recent college graduates who "only"[1] have a CS degree?

It would seem the actual threshold for a software engineer position, is at least:

* CS degree

* Good knowledge of algorithms and ability to recall and implement them

* GitHub page and some nontrivial tool or open source contributions

A typical non-senior-level job description might call for ruby, javascript, SQL, knowledge of algorithms, and personal projects that would (presumably) impress whoever is hiring you.

I have seen anecdotes recently of liberal arts people learning one language and getting programming jobs, however I have trouble believing that this is very common at all, because I can't imagine where they are finding these "give 'em a chance" jobs.

Let's not confuse competition for mid and senior level software engineers with JOBS FOR EVERYONE.

[1] Even at a state university, its more than possible for an engaged person to work with everything from algorithms to Lisp to robots to compilers and many other things HN holds dear, just from classes.
It's the whole reason he left Google so quickly. I've been enjoying reading his updates on the project. There's a far better video at http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/cool_robot_video
Only if there are significant talent differences. If everyone who went to Harvard already has the same base level of talent necessary to be a success, then you might as well pick random grads (which is basically what the surveyed peoples' methodologies boil down to) because the remaining variation isn't worth measuring.
How elite firms hire
It would be more interesting to see letters per capita.
Agree with you 100% (and just wrote a top level comment to the same effect before I read this).

That said, I think law schools would be much better off if they had an interview process & weighted it heavily. It would be easy to get a 4.0/180 and not be "client-friendly" in the least.
You would never know that based on the signs being waved and the t-shirts being worn.
Ask HN: Programming movies/music (to help get in the zone)
I've lately been watching the movie Social Network over and over, along with Tron and Anti-Trust. These movies seem to put me into the right mental state to sit down and program for hours on end (mostly for work at the moment, but also some personal projects) without stopping.

Are there any other movies that you guys would suggest that do the same thing? Any other good movies about programming or that help you program?

I am also looking for good programming music. The sound tracks from both Tron and the Social Network are absolutely fantastic, but I am always looking for more suggestions!
> market forces at work behind compensation.

this article is about hiring, not compensation. inside one firm, there's no evidence compensation is linked to which college you went to.

> how insanely easy it is to game this system if you've the knack for standardized exam

this is irrelevant.

1. no one is hiring just looking at resumes. this is just the screen. they have 500 resumes to look at; they're going to pick some sort of screening system.

2. let's say you got into Harvard Law on your LSAT but you're otherwise lazy and stupid; they'll figure that out based on your interview and your lack of other accomplishments. school is just a screener. they're still going to look at the rest of your resume and ask you questions in the interview.
You can get some basic products from USAA, including some banking (no insurance though), but you can't be a full member unless you're military.
Rather than trying to design for how people should act, we can try to design in a manner that optimizes for measurable objectives that we can all agree on as good. A few objectives I can think of are "least number of people hungry", "most number of people reporting themselves as satisfied" etc.

I don't understand why we aren't doing this now. Our political mechanisms and were designed a few centuries ago by people who had the mathematical and scientific sophistication of a contemporary high school student. There is every reason to believe that we can do better if we put our best minds on this task.
For class of 2011, which was the one most hard-hit by the recession, Harvard Law was still at about 80% of people who wanted it getting those jobs. I'd imagine it's back over 90% now. Even Columbia is over 75% now.

As for getting in the top half... it's another highly game-able thing. Your grades are based entirely on exams that are basically like the LSAT---they test you on how quickly you can apply a relatively simple set of rules to ambiguous facts. The only classes that test your writing (which is what you actually do as a lawyer!) in the all-important first year are typically weighted very little, or even ungraded.
Unfortunately, no iPhones 4S.
> I'm not going to contribute to his blatant self-promotion.

If Wales was really fond of self-promotion, he could have done a lot more. He probably wouldn't have set up a foundation with an elected board of trustees which runs the foundation in his stead.

I find it more likely that this is just the Wikimedia Foundation trying to give a humane face to Wikipedia in order to get more donations. It might be a misguided move, but I don't think Wales is excessively pushing for it.
Facebook's JavelinJS framework page has been hacked. javelinjs.com
...when subsidized by carrier plans. Changing the "Service Type" selection at the top to "Phone only" gives standard phone prices.
I could imagine a Facebook MVNO where they sell the data plan below cost and try to make it up with ads.
Where could I download this as one huge stiched image, please?
Separating You and Me? 4.74 Degrees
Ask PG: comment score randomness?
I've noticed recently that most of my comments will be downvoted soon after posting, stay at 0 points for several minutes, and then eventually be voted up to their final positive score. Is this a real voting phenomenon, or an artifact of the way HN displays votes?
Yup their stregths are also their weaknesses. Big opportunity for a contrarian to go in and do the exact opposite of one or more of their hiring strategies.

Avoid the elite schools completely and radically cut the cost of acquiring talent (with presumably less competition for said talent). Pick out promising talent that may have been overlooked by lack of pedigree. Pick out outliers with unconvential ideas. Increase the diversity of personalities and backgrounds to increase the odds of radically new ideas. Ignore grades and come up with your own methods for testing candidates.

Many possibilities.
4 months later: In unrelated news, sales of Android phones surged 500% in the 4th quarter, once again surpassing iPhone sales.
Didn’t Get That New Job? You Need a Better Facebook Score
Typing Through Time: Keyboard History
Except some people fall back to the A record (see RFC 5321).
Wikipedia has the history of imdb:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Movie_Database
Anatomy of Facebook
Given that they use the same renderers, and Apple is gradually copying Chrome's security / reliability features (sand-boxing using subprocess) in every part of their OS (it's arguably the biggest feature in Lion), I don't think it really matters.

If Safari (and the tech behind it) really starts lagging, Google might worry a little, but I can't see how it's a big deal.

Google is using the strategy Microsoft seems to have given up on - don't rely on your ability to monopolise everything, just keep a foot in every door, and keep pushing at every level.
But what % of those 80% are getting top-tier biglaw jobs (or clerkships)?

I have no idea - but my dad does law in the public sector (read: not lucrative) and anecdotally he says he's able to hire lots of top 10 law school grads who never would have applied for that kind of job five years ago.
Caffeine boosts signals in the hippocampus
Political change must go hand in hand with cultural change. It is easy to blame a democratically elected leader, yet quite difficult to identify the underlying problems of those who elected that leader to power.

Russia is decades ahead of other countries, but they have a long path ahead of them. A good start would be teaching English in elementary school.
Personally, I'd like a DJVU and PDF viewier that lets you highlight regions of pages and create hyperlinks to other pages in the same document. It should also have a history feature that gives you back/forward functionality like a web browser, and the focus should be on making it easy to read or refer to books and documents that require a lot of jumping around.

I'd especially like one that suggests hyperlinks for documents based off of what users typically make hyperlinks for or based off of some kind of algorithm with heuristics built on content and formatting conventions, because even though just being able to create your own hyperlinks would be handy for studying and reviewing, having them appear magically would be a killer feature.

However, that'd probably be too hard for a single weekend. For one thing, it'd still have to be a good PDF viewer, which means nice features like being able to custom crop/zoom pages to hide margins in documents with lots of extra white space, and it'd have to perform well with the large, complex kind of documents that people would want to add hyperlinks to.

It also lacks long term viability due to the slow rise of eBooks with hyperlinked content on delivery platforms like the Kindle.
The thing I like most about the iOS Gmail app is that it’s an elegant solution, they packaged the excellent webapp (the soon to be released redesign) and endowed it with native notification capability. It’s a cost-effective solution and one that makes sense, packaging webapps and augmenting them with native capabilities, voice control in the case of the search app. Now my question is when will we see the new Google design on the desktop?
It's smarter than a global lock (come on!). I would suggest reading the article which describes the implementation [1].

[1]: http://www.velox-project.eu/velox-transactional-memory-stack (courtesy scott_s)
Wait, why doesnt apple just fix its software? .local isn't reserved. Seems like picking some arbitrary fix over another isn't helping matters.
From what I've heard India totally has their equivalent of their Great Firewall, blocking VOIP calls and more.
At least in law, once inside the firm your compensation is in lock-step by seniority. In banking, unless you're in trading where your contribution is very easily quantifiable, your bonus will depend largely on how your particular division/project does.

And this article isn't just about screening. You can do pretty terribly at Harvard Law and still walk out with a 160k+bonus job. Firms hire after the first year of law school, and so don't really care about what you do in law school either. The interviews are a cakewalk, mostly to screen people with serious personality problems who are otherwise borderline from a school/grades standpoint.

Banking/consulting is even more credential focused. They hire from a narrower range of schools than law firms, and put less emphasis on having top grades.
So I've wondered this for a long time.

Where does email sent to wildcard@example.com go? If I accidentally sent sensitive information to wildcard@example.com would some evil person (potentially at the IANA) be able to retrieve it someday?
I am totally disagree. Although the breakthroughs in the tech scene are not as groundbreaking as it seems, the implications for social interaction, commerce and education is astounding. I believe we are yet to see the fruits of internet and related technologies in the years ahead of us. Khan Academy, Stanford's online classes, and tons of other educational material available through internet I believe effecting a lot of people's lives.
North Face Denali-Mens Black Red Jackets
> But what % of those 80% are getting top-tier biglaw jobs (or clerkships)?

At Harvard, Yale, and Stanford? Yes. The other good schools (top 10/15-ish) are in the 60% range. Outside the top 20, it's probably in the 10% range and below.
There wouldn't be the protests and signs being waved if corporations couldn't buy laws.
NodeUp Podcast, hosted by creators of dnode, capsule, transloadit, and flatiron
(This is why I find Occupy Wall Street threatening.)

I do not think OWS, to the extent it has a coherent set or ideas or ideologies, is anti-business per se; I think it is opposed to the zero-sum thinking that characterizes much of Wall Street and political life right now. See, e.g.: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_reckoning/2011/11/21/it_s_the... :

<blockquote>In fact, blame for the failure of the congressional super committee belongs with every American who failed to vote in the 2010 midterm election. Nothing encapsulates the dysfunction of American democracy better than the fact that we abdicate responsibility for governing our country (and running our economy) to a radical minority every four years out of laziness and, to a smaller extent, deliberate efforts by both parties to depress turnout they know will favor their rivals.</blockquote>

Or, from HN, http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/18/clayton-... (Clayton Christensen: "How Pursuit of Profits Kills Innovation and the U.S. Economy.")

Notice how people are not saying "Occupy tech firms in Silicon Valley," and I think they aren't because it's pretty clear that Apple, Google, etc. are generating real value that improves lives; it's not at all clear finance and many parts of government are doing so at the moment and it may be that they're actually destroying value while taking advantage of an insider's feedback loop that prevents market forces from actually acting on them in any serious way. If anything, I suspect OWS, to the extent it has a coherent ideology, would be pro-business, as long as that business isn't doing things to hurt people, institutions, or government.
You know that Coca-Cola does make millions of refrigerators for its distributors right?
It is only after Google decided to compete with Apple that Apple bought an advertising company,...

I'm reasonably sure that Google announced Android before the iPhone was ever announced.

Yes, I know that pre-iPhone Androids looked and worked differently from how they did before the iPhone was announced, but that doesn't change the fact that Google decided to tread the mobile waters before Apple was a competitor.

Google's search results are in a marked decline.

[Citation Needed]
I assume you're not talking about Siri right?