skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Nowadays, it is illegal in the U.S. to give IQ tests to job applicants

Citation needed.

It is legal (at least based on the guidelines provided by the US Department of Labor: http://www.onetcenter.org/dl_files/empTestAsse.pdf) to give people all kinds of tests as long as (a) they do not select against certain protected traditionally disadvantaged classes more than it does for the average applicant or (b) if it does, there is a demonstrable link between the test and ability to perform job functions (so, for instance, a test of strength in a job that involves lots of lifting may select against women, but if strength is highly correlated with job performance, that is OK).

IQ tests are actually a fairly poor test for many jobs, and they can test many things besides just intelligence (for instance, knowledge of the English language or cultural trivia). For a blue-collar job, an IQ test may disadvantage people from a different cultural background or who don't speak English as a native language, without actually being particularly relevant to job performance. One of the cases that has come up many times is in fire departments, in which written tests are given and used to screen out applicants who score below a certain level, when much of the knowledge tested is not actually all that important to the job.

These days, for a programming job, you would give a more specific test of programming ability. At the time, given that there probably weren't a lot of people with training or experience programming who could be hired, an IQ test was probably a reasonably good generic stand in for the aptitude to learn and think critically.
FLA SECURES COMMITMENT TO LIMIT WORKERS' HOURS, PROTECT PAY AT FOXCONN
I didn't memorize the respawn pattern but I knew where all of the respawn spots were, so I'd throw a proximity mine on each one. My friends would be so pissed, they'd respawn and die over and over and over.... ;)
You can repeat a similar analysis like they did against an opponent who chooses carefully and knows your strategy. With the theory of two person zero-sum games you can even prove that there's a perfect strategy both for the guesser and the chooser each that doesn't get worse if the other party knows it. (Hint: the strategies will involve random selection with carefully weighted probabilities.)
"Were found." Passive voice. Following the link, we discover that the "finder" is Judge Robert Peckham in 1979:

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/17/us/robert-f-peckham-72-inf...

No offense, but who the fsck is Bob Peckham? And why should anyone in 2012 care what he thought in 1979? BTW, he was in a position to "find" because LBJ made him a judge in 1966. Hear LBJ's enlightened racial perspectives here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1rIDmDWSms

I also like how IQ tests are racist against dumb black kids, but not smart black kids. That's some awful specialized racism you got goin' on there.
I am a fan.

I'll also note that what you serve in day ... is about what Google serves in a minute.

http://www.quora.com/How-many-search-queries-does-Google-ser...
Sources of Randomness for Userspace
Tech Culture: More Legos and Less Punch Buggy
World News Hours: '19 Kids and Counting': New season, Duggars talk miscarriage
Foxconn Auditor Finds ‘Serious’ Violations of Chinese Law
Verified in Chicago.
CrowdCall, the first easy to use group calling app for iPhone and Android
A test needn't be purposefully bigoted to be effectively bigoted.

If I were to sit down and try to create a test of intelligence right now, I'd almost certainly include dozens of biases based on my own abilities, perceptions and experiences. Many of these biases would translate into higher scores for people like me, and lower scores for those whose lives differed.

This would create a situation where, either by malice of negligence, the process would be bigoted.

----

Sperazzo published a paper in 1959 documenting racial differences between Negros and Whites in these tests, and also noting as a previous given that "the performance test is sensitive to socioeconomic background".

As such, it seems like it was known, at the time, that it wasn't so much a test of intelligence but a test of race and socioeconomic status.
There are lots of good further caveats in this thread.

We should have a hangman AI tournament.
> PS: Actually generating this list is a 'hard' problem and very dictionary dependent, but you can probably get reasonably close using some sort of genetic algorithm and a enough simulation time.

Sounds like a challenge. I don't think, given a dictionary, finding the ideal strategy for both parties will be that challenging. It's a fairly straightforward two person zero-sum game. You can either model it assuming hidden information, or concurrent play. (Which is basically the same here.)

As an interesting variation, you might allow the chooser to cheat: I.e. don't make them write down the word in the first place, just require their play to be consistent.
+1

Reading your short list triggered a flashback. I struggled with everything you listed, probably more.

When I made a run at getting an existing RoR project running on my Mac (~1 year ago), there was no shortage of howtos and advice. The problem was resolving all the contradictory information.

As moe points out, the project home page should have the single source of validated truth on how to get RoR running on a Mac. Minimally.

That such a source of truth didn't exist led me to conclude that Rails was run by amateurs and to not be taken seriously.
Photoshop Tutorial: Create A Golden Bling Text Effect.
Today in this Photoshop Typography Tutorial we will be creating a beautiful and realistic golden bling jewelry text effect. This is a beautiful effect, and very easy to come up with such an realistic outlook.
Investigation of Apple Supplier Finds “Excessive Overtime,” Health, Safety Risks
I'm 41, married, and have 3 kids - my "cofounder" and I have just applied to YC for Summer 2012. I've been running in "start up" mode since around 2000, so my lifestyle has adjusted to a much lower level of pay than I would expect had I continued working in the fortune 500 as a developer, but I don't regret a single moment of it.

Even though your idea is ambitious, you might consider nights/weekends to work on it - you know the whole "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" - get something together and see if you can raise some funding - you never know. There's a lot of money being throw around right now.

I think YC is setup so it attracts those who are willing to go out on a limb for an idea, since (and this is a guess) they might be the most likely to persevere through the rough patches and stick with their idea until it succeeds.
> That's because in the past, the IQ tests were not fair, objective and colour-blind, but were set up in such a way as to bias against poorer people (which will be mostly black in the USA).

This isn't true at all. They haven't been shown to be biased, merely that blacks score lower. Extensive research has show that IQ tests have equal predictive power for blacks and whites. "Disparate impact" merely means that blacks score lower, not that the tests are biased.

> This is easy to do with IQ tests, just ask lots of questions that require good schooling and education (e.g. word questions).

The black-white gap is as large or larger on tasks that require very little education, e.g. "reverse digit span", which merely requires that you repeat a sequence of numbers in the reverse order from the direction you heard it.

> and has hence probably improved equality.

I've never understood why eliminating one of the few objective measures and making the hiring process entirely subjective was an improvement.
> Is this a conspiracy theory? It sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory to me. Just sayin'.

On the contrary, it was probably a mixture of ignorance and 'common knowledge.' I'm going to assume that if you're posting on this site that you probably are involved with making websites or software. Were you aware that a portion of your customers are colorblind in some way? Did you actively design your site to be hard for them to use? Probably not. Does that mean it is a non-issue? No. Much in the same way, white male test-makers make IQ tests that they think "anyone should know," without realizing that capable people with different backgrounds would not score very well at all.
"Set up in such a way as to" is a deliberately ambiguous construction. It allows the reader to believe that there is, or is not, a conspiracy.

If I say, "Harvard admissions are set up in such a way as to admit large numbers of Jews," someone believing in a Jewish conspiracy will hear my dog-whistle and agree with me. But to someone not believing in a Jewish conspiracy, I can deny everything. A highly useful and malignant propaganda device.

And when you add "possibly deliberately so," you prove this point completely. What else could "deliberately so" mean? So, it may be a Jewish conspiracy that Harvard admits lots of Jews. But it might not be. That's some compromise position.

Normally, when we think of conspiracy theories (like Holocaust denial), we classify Holocaust deniers and "Holocaust agnostics" in the same bin. And rightly so. I'm certainly not interested in compromising on the position that maybe the Holocaust happened, but maybe it didn't.

Also, when I believe things, I prefer to believe them on better evidence than "perhaps we can believe." Sorry - I know it's an inspiring story and you're not looking for a flamewar. This is Asperger-infested HN, however. Geeks like their facts cold, hard, and entirely factual - don't they?
she would constantly feel like a fraud,

Nonsense. Americans today are trained from a young age to have a sense of entitlement. People who are promoted above their ability are quite capable of blaming their inability to perform on prejudice or conspiracy on the part of peers or subordinates.
As an ordinary person outside of the VC world, I literally have no idea what Airbnb is. Never heard of them once. Ever. I think there may be a mismatch between what people who read Techcrunch consider exciting and what actually has traction with the public at large.
Ask HN: NY lottery  $500 Million - Why do people insist on buying tickets?
> No, everyone benefits when the patent is published, because you can start studying how the invention worked

Fair point.

> The spirit of the patent system is not that you can/must form patent pools, but that you are forced to invent a different, and hopefully better, product. If nobody can come up with an improvement within a limited period of time, then this could be taken as proof that your solution is the best one

This is the theory, but practice differs wildly. More often than not you're not coming up with another, unrelated and possibly marginally better solution, but progressing by varying increments (standing on the solders of giants). Part of your improved solution could very well be found to be subject to the initial patent, either upfront when application is rejected, or later on when legally challenged. So a very real scenario is that you are simply forced to reinvent a wheel as being square when you should be focusing on improving a round one. As such maybe nobody could come up with an improvement precisely because nobody researched such a solution in the first place in fear of outrageous patent licensing costs on the parent method, or fear of litigation afterwards, both of which would simply make your research investment void.
Anonymous to shut down Internet over SOPA
They can become the file system for the internet. If they're successful, many futures apps (mobile or desktop) will sit on top of Dropbox software to sync files and app state for their users. That is an incredibly powerful vision.
太阳城娱乐
I don't think that's true. I don't remember enabling it on any mac I've bought, but I remember having to enable tap to click.
Actually, if you read the whole thing... She had to fight to get them to see her demonstrated aptitude.

I did read the whole thing. She "fought" by answering more questions demonstrating her aptitude, and her interviewers eventually conceded the point:

They tried various other questions, questions from other tests, questions they used for more advanced candidates. Gwen answered as best she could. The men were amazed. To their credit, once they became convinced that she hadn’t faked her results, they knew she would be a great hire. They recommended her for training as a programmer analyst, the most senior position being filled.
Stick to Your Minimum Monthly Payment When Buying a Car from a Dealership
I think they disabled the "1 mbit/s" option. That way, if your device can't get a signal strong enough to maintain at least 2 mbit/s, it will disconnect and try to connect to another AP. This reduces packet loss, packet retransmission, congestion, and noise.
So, I used to work for a company that provided connectivity for hotels, restaurants, stadiums and other hotspots (like temporary venues). In every case, the network is designed for the common case. Hotels would be low churn, low density, a coffeeshop would be high churn, medium density while a stadium would be extremely high density, massive peak association rate but very high churn. Tech conferences have the same use patterns and density of a stadium. Unless there is prior arrangements and understanding of this, all hotels are going to go "yes, we have interne, yes it's good and we'll charge $x for it" and not notify the provider and not make any changes. Everything they did is standard practice for setting up a high density network.

If you are the organizer of a tech conference, please, communicate that you need special network considerations and get in contact with the hotel's provider, or arrange to have your own provider brought in as soon as possible. 3 months lead time is cutting it close.
Great comment - in hangman, choosing letters solely on the basis of data (no matter how complete the data or how compelling the study) is a highly predictable (and thus highly defeatable) strategy.

Of course, this analysis has a counterpoint. If I try to pick words strategically, I suspect that my words would begin to follow patterns...
> overzealous mods shutting down my questions in the most condescending tone possible.

SO moderator here. We just click a link. The pre-defined close reasons are inserted automatically. No one is taking a tone with you.
I took IBM's Programmer Aptitude test in 1991, and it was a memorable test even 20 years later. Not exactly an IQ test, but yes, lots of problem solving questions.
From the FSF's own list of GPL-compatible licenses:

> License of Ruby (#Ruby)

> This is a free software license, compatible with the GPL via an explicit dual-licensing clause.
I'm not sure I get this? Putting down more up front, and paying more per month, means you'd pay the loan off faster and will pay less interest overall, right? So you'd come out ahead. Why is that bad?
Apple Supplier in China Pledges Big Changes in Working Conditions
Edge-preserving self-healing: keeping network backbones densely connected (pdf)
" Increasing the minimum data and multicast rate from 1Mbps to 2Mbps "

In wifi networks, you can significantly reduce on-air collisions with other packets if you can send at a higher rate. A packet being sent at 2Mbps spends 1/2 the time on the wireless channel as compared to a one that is sent at 1Mbps. Therefore halving the probability that this packet will collide with some other transmission.
I took a similar aptitude test applying to IBM when I graduated in 2000. It was actually a lot of fun.

Great story raganwald, it made my day.
Zuckerberg seems to have done okay.

People who are concerned with the age of their boss are a little too concerned with status / authority / hierarchy to be at an early-stage startup.
The Microsoft IP tussle over Android
That's only true if the worst case still lets you win the game. Otherwise, your opponent will pick the worst case word every time and you lose. As a zero-sum game, if the players agree on a dictionary beforehand, there is some Nash Equilibrium; I don't have the skill to figure out what it would be, but there would have to be some nonzero probability of guessing every word in the dictionary before running out of guesses.
Probably have a better chance hitting the lottery than striking gold creating a startup.
I don't disagree that wal mart is an innovator and that their innovations allowed them to crush their competitors, but from the perspective of Wal-Mart in 1969 they aren't doing anything new. At that point they're "Sears for people who want to pay less" which illustrates the silliness of OPs POV.

Fundamentally though Wal-Mart's business model is "big truck - small truck" it's just a specialization of Sears business model, similar to how all the businesses on TC are X for Y.
The interesting thing is that it was probably not designed as a general IQ test, but as a test specifically developed at great expense to test for aptitude at computer programming at a time where absolutely nobody could be expected to have prior interest (let alone experience) in that occupation.

This kind of thing was the normal way of hiring programmers for a while before computer science departments became common at universities.

I learned this from "The Psychology of Computer Programming", originally published 1971. A fascinating read, both as a glimpse at a professional environment completely unimaginable to people accustomed to have their own dev machine, and more so for realizing that a lot of what the author wrote about the problems occurring in that environment are still relevant today.
I think this was a given however, it is nice to see it documented and backed by data. I assume this is why 'predatory' (by my definition) advertising for useless tech products such as Carbonite does so well on conservative talk radio. Conservative talk shows like Limbaugh have well documented racism and prejudice which have all been linked to a Low IQ.[1]

Interesting.

[1]http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/01/04/095679761142...
It's rational. Sometimes. If the expected value is more than a dollar, and the ticket costs a dollar, you should buy a ticket : See: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/do_the_math/2001/08/is_po...

If you limit it to about two dollars a year it's also a cheap entertainment to fantasize about hitting the numbers.

Otherwise it's a tax on people who can't do math.
I think this is another in a long series of articles that mistakes the press coverage for the vision. When journalists say "we're x for y" that's their way of conveying the information in a way that makes sense to us, by relating it to something we already understand (at least usually: I've seen TechCrunch use increasingly esoteric examples for "x" of late).

In some cases the companies themselves use that line in their pitch. This isn't surprising, given that it's such a fast and powerful way to give people a rough idea of what you're doing and how short each presentation at YC demo day is.

But that doesn't change the fact that in either case, this is just shorthand and isn't reflective of the grand vision of any of these companies.
I hear there's this other guy who tried to start a social network... Zuckersomething... was pretty young too. I think things worked out pretty alright for him.

They'll be fine :) If anything, they are best positioned to appreciated exactly how Facebook doesn't work for families.
Most of these have very close parallels in previous MVC frameworks, such as Rails and Apple's Cocoa. I think the biggest reason YUI3 and Backbone look more similar to each other than to those is because they're both client-side JavaScript frameworks instead of backend like Rails or desktop like Cocoa.
Beware; "now" appears to be 2009 and most of those products were discontinued once the iPad came out.
I am often deliberately ambiguous about the motives of people I don’t know well. For example, you may or may not be deliberately grinding your pet axe about race and IQ tests in a story which is not really about intelligence but actually about overcoming obstacles.

And I choose to believe that you are capable of adding more signal and less noise. On very poor evidence, so far.
How does HBO make money on expensive shows only 3 million people watch?
Exactly, NEXTStep was already employing a mach kernel with the BSD user space.
Why doesn't it "look good?" Oh, noes - am I a witch?

Could you, as an engineer, design a better system to make sure that all Eskimos are "likely" incompetent at their jobs, than promoting Eskimos over Tamils just because they are Eskimos and not Tamils?

Another cross-cultural comparison might be useful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumiputera_(Malaysia)
It's not the NY lottery, but a multistate lottery called "MegaMillions". And people buy tickets for many reasons. Neverminding "being rich seems awesome," I imagine the two chief reasons are:

-They can afford to throw away a few bucks every now and then.

-They know they have no opportunity to be so wealthy otherwise.
Another comment has noted that the fact that this program is nationally, as opposed to regionally accredited "could affect whether or not credits acquired here are recognized by other schools."

I would revise this to say "This will mean that your credits will almost certainly not transfer to any regionally accredited school." Pretty much every college worth going to is regionally accredited. To make this clear, regional accreditation is harder to achieve than national accreditation, yet my local community college and University of Phoenix are both regionally accredited.

On the other hand, you have schools like ITT Tech, which is nationally accredited. This is a school which is notorious for hiding the fact that your credits will likely not transfer to any regionally accredited school.

These are incredibly important things to be aware of before enrolling in any sort of non-traditional school. If you have any desire to use what you've accomplished to move on to, say, a public university, make sure that the classes you're attending will transfer. If the classes you're taking are from a nationally accredited institution, they likely won't.
True enough. But I'd say this is an even worse outcome than feeling like a fraud.
The equipment provider offers paid support, I gave them the support number. I don't like to leave people hanging.
Ask HN: Is there something to Social Customer Service?
My weekend project is failrecovery.com. I'm hoping to use social pressure to pressure brands into taking social complaints seriously. I thought making it open, so anyone can see, could be interesting too. Eventually, anyone can see how a brand handles complaints / problems.

Before I get too many hours into it, I wanted to see what you all thought. There's a lot more work that needs to be done, but is it interesting? Do you think there's something to it?

failrecovery.com

Thanks,
Maintenance of a basic WiFi access point has exactly one step:

1. Reset Router.

Hardly rocket science...
Geeks like their facts cold, hard, and entirely factual - don't they?

Sort of. Those of us who live in the real world, where there are shades of grey around every corner, and where subtlety and nuance count for a lot, have realized that we can't always have things served up to us like that.

Unfortunately real life stubbornly refuses to bend to the will of us geeks (and yes, I definitely am one) who want things to behave in ways that can be modeled strictly by cold, hard facts.