skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Doesn't this all assume that the opponent is choosing a random word? If they're trying to be evil, I'm sure they can pick words where each letter you get gives little information.

For example, which letter do you guess if the puzzle is _og? You still have to go through bcdfhjln even after you've burned however many guesses getting that o & g.
Too bad YC got rid of the "if you were an animal, what would you be, and why" question, which was on the Dropbox-era application.
The 1000 genomes bucket is open to the public, so you don't need to clone it for your own purposes. Any data you generate will need to be in your own bucket.
It isn't a trick: the same thing happens in the US with African-American names on resumes and is trivially repeatable on your own if you are so inclined. It has nothing to do with job performance either: measured job performance isn't variable.

It does have to do with cultural comfort, and the fact humans make hiring decisions instead of machines. In any case where human judgement has been replaced by measurement or judgement blind to demographics diversity has increased.

I know it's annoying when reality is non-optimized, but it doesn't take twisting ourselves into knots to explain why: humans make predictably bad decisions.
Rate my startup: LiveLoop
LiveLoop is a PowerPoint plugin that allows an entire team to work on the same presentation at the same time, seeing each others' edits in true real-time as you type instead of emailing dozens of versions back and forth. It's like Etherpad for Office. We support PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 on Windows.

http://getliveloop.com
Gimp 2.8: So Close, Yet So Far, Yet So Close
Foxconn Pledges Big Changes in Working Conditions
What you say is true, in that context. I guess it depends on what the group is we're talking about when we're talking what "average" is. He could become an "average" consumer in the context of a vegetarian; always eating what every other vegetarian is eating because he's never offered an alternative.

As for your example with the programming languages, I would find it annoying if it only always displayed results for what it "thinks" I'm looking for. I'd rather define what language I need the information for. Otherwise, if I get accustomed to the system then it would impede me from researching a new language because I'll have to go on a crusade to convince it that I do indeed want information about a new subject. Then it learns my new subject but what if I want to go back to getting information about the old subject? Now I have to convince it that, yes, I do want the information I wanted before that I didn't want later that I want again now.

At least give us the option to turn it off.

I don't know where you got scary from though.
Not showing in Philadelphia.
As someone w/ drug use in my past, I believe very strongly that the stigma around it is deserved.

I would think very hard about hiring or investing in someone who used marijuana, or who decided to sell marijuana (a bet with a big risk for very little reward), or who thought that using drugs was cool enough to include it on an application. Speaking from experience, marijuana is addictive, saps ambition, and makes it difficult to think hard and think logically. Anyone who has tried to code or do math while high knows exactly what I am talking about.

Wesley, obviously you have grown and been very successful since. I wish you only more success, and you are already far ahead of where I was at 19 (still smoking too much pot).
overall you get a much larger percentage of your reputation from upvotes rather than having your answers accepted.
Actually we don't have the full DNA sequence for any human. For example, if you look at the data from say the Genome Reference Consortium the first 10,000 bases on Chromosome are designated as N - unknown.
... yes? That was my point. They switched from a GPL-like license to a BSD one.
My favorite strategy: four letter word. Say no to everything until they guess U: _ U _ _ then decide on the least likely word which includes none of their guesses, often "junk".
You guys/girls are positively KILLING IT! DDG is already incredible and I use it as my default Firefox searchbar service now.

With Google+, core search is getting worse and worse. I can barely stand to use default Google these days. DDG is leading innovation in web search, and it's about damn time for some disruption in that space.

Bravo! I'll be checking out that sysadmin opportunity too. I only wish you were downtown in SF.

Stay amazing.
For many IQ tests there is a correlation between wealth and high IQ results (and conversely, poverty and low IQ tests). IQ tests, do no measure 'innate intelligence' (mostly because no-one really knows what that even is or how to measure it). As a result if you have more, and better education and schooling, you more more likely to have a higher IQ. So if you're in a group that has worse and less education, you're more likely to have lower IQ.

As an example of how IQ test results aren't too reliable: IQ tests have been rising year on year for decades (the Flynn effect). Either we're all a pile of geniuses (which makes you wonder what score people in the middle ages got), or IQ test is inflenced by external things.
I'm a lot more interested in stroke dynamics and zooming than I am in resolution and pressure sensitivity. I don't mean to say that those features wouldn't be welcome, but no real world tool can do everything. And limitations are often the foundation of style and expression.

I spent several years drawing with silverpoint and while it was an excruciating experience, the results were often gorgeous; especially as the drawing "ages" and the silver tarnishes. Talk about your non-intuitive interface.
Imation 27672 LTO 5 World First Multi Terabyte data storage cartridge
LTO Ultrium technology based data backup solution was introduced in mid 90s and makes a vital impact on data storage problems. Imation is one of the most prominent names in this category. Imation has developed new advanced Imation 27672 LTO-5, backup tape format, which is the first storage tape that presents a massive recording storage capacity which is in terabytes digit, with impressive and most demanded native storage capacity of 1.5Terabytes and 3.Terbytes with compressed data. Imation LTO5, equally improved its data transfer speed with 140MB/Sec native and 280MB/Sec with compressed data. Imation has made impressive important improvement to LTO-5 tape more than its preceding LTO tape versions.
My suspicion is that you may want to move away from trivia based questions (what is the 3rd parameter of the form.print dialog, or how would you move Mt Fuji) to ones like "describe a situation where you inspired others to meet a common goal" or "Describe a situation when the quality of work you completed wasn't the highest quality it could have been. What were the circumstances and what did you learn?".

Competency based interviewing is a bit harder, since you first have to figure out what the actual job competencies are and then base some questions around them. The questions won't have "correct" answers, instead they help you - the interviewer - determine how the interviewee thinks/makes decisions and you can then decide how they'll fit into your organization.

In addition, you may want to look at their resume and tailor one or 2 questions based on what they did at companyX. The PDF linked below should give you some idea of what sort of questions to ask.

One book that may be of interest:
http://www.amazon.com/Competency-Based-Interviews-Master-Int...

Some example questions:
https://sharepoint.sandiego.edu/hr/Employment/CompetencyInte...

Website with some explanation and examples:
http://www.wikijob.co.uk/wiki/competency-based-interview

Wikipedia articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation,_Task,_Action,_Result
It's also not how affirmative action works, even if it was still broadly used (which it's not): http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/02/granting-women-a...

Aggregate performance was either unaffected or improved in the presence of affirmative action. This fits with history: until 1972 almost no women were admitted to MIT, but it didn't make the men perform less well for all the affirmative action they received nor cheapen their accomplishments.
From the original article on him finding the source code:

Yesterday he found it, and the discovery is all thanks to his father. The three packs of 3.5″ Apple ProDOS disks had been safely stored away in a brown box along with a load of Amstrad copies of his 1984 game Karateka.

And from your link, in the first excerpt from his Journal from 1985:

Dad called. Billboard’s top-ranked program for this week is, indeed, Karateka.

I thought that was a funny coincidence. :)
This poll is missing an option: I don't use SO because it required OpenID to register.

I guess it supports other options now, but back in the day, that's why I never participated.
You can be subconsciously mildly racist without being a screaming bigot. In fact, pretty much all of us are that, to varying extents.

Your second line of thought seems to approach "I'm not racist, arabs just actually are unenlightened bastards".
As 60th anniversary nears, tape reinvents itself
The Hacker News [ THN ] - Updates to Security Experts and Hackers
He is capable of adding extraordinary quantities of both signal and noise, as evidenced by his collected writings: http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/
Why You Don't Need A Programmer
EDIT: the API call works now.
In this case it does, but very often doesn't. It seems to me that this happens mostly with rapidly changing websites, as if the cache showed a somewhat later state than when it was indexed.

And this has been an annoyance since years.
Lisping at the Jet Propulsion Lab
The Dispossessed
There is nothing passive aggressive about realizing the futility is arguing with a certain segment of men (or women for that matter) unless your goal is just to argue. If ones ambition is to be persuasive one must confront the situation understanding the shortcomings of the other person, if the intention is not to be persuasive then what is the use in even engaging.
Previous submission from 3.5 years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=304736 (I thought it was worth submitting again.)
Anonymous To Shut Down The Internet On March 31st
We're not all eating ramen and single. Yes, when you're married with kids and a mortgage the immediate risk is greater, but that doesn't mean us <27's are immune or ignorant of risk. Many of us have 100k in school loans. Even the ones who don't are not eager to throw away a safe opportunity at an established company to forge out on their own.

I had a tough time finding a cofounder among my peers. Even the most entrepreneurial of them, people who had started things in college, are still far more inclined to go to work for someone else (especially with an offer in this job market). While I know there's a myriad of reasons, I think a most would rather go somewhere where all of the responsibility is on them. If you mess up at a big company, there's hundreds or thousands of others that shoulder the fallout. If you mess up and you're one of 2 or 3 or 4 people....

My point is that it takes courage to start your own company no matter what age you are.
I would be willing to bet they are doing some kind of inertial modeling in their stroke dynamics right now. There is some kind of "Dynadraw" algorithm in their now that is smoothing and adjusting stroke thickness. Some it seems to be based on pointer velocity, but there is something else going on that I can't quite put my finger on ... as it were.
Top 5 irritating UX trends (just a bit of fun)
Your experience may have been different, but it is less addictive than alcohol, caffeine, or chocolate.
http://www.drugsense.org/tfy/addictvn.htm
I wasn't responding to the original story, but to a comment which I felt made unfair and scurrilous accusations about scientists of the past whom I respect.

It's true that these charges are conventional in our society. Most people would let them pass without notice. However, most people would not endorse letting the unacceptable pass without notice - so I don't think I'm being antisocial.
OS independent iCloud is a nice feature but hard to see the path to Apple sized scale from it. It's just one of fifty UX headaches of typical computer use. Easier to get at those from OS or browser positions, Dropbox is in a weird spot.
> why 1000 genomes matters

Gotta start somewhere. And 1000 data points is more than enough to get some statistically significant results.
Apple supplier audit finds major wage and overtime violations
Oh wow. I remember that issue.
Ask HN: most successful youngest and oldest founder
What is the Age of the youngest and oldest person who founded a successful startup?
I haven't heard a case of them using the facility, but the very fact it exists and that they specifically highlight it shows how piracy has become such an issue for them. Maybe the media attention and 'brick campaign' made them think twice about it.
Yes, and she wouldn't have to fight if she

Let's pretend there was another black women who wasn't in the 99th percentile, but only the 85th. Let's pretend they would hire anyone over 80th percentile. They might, again, think she was cheating, and hence ask her more, harder, questions, like Gwen here. And since this person is in the 85th percentile, she might not have gotten all the questions right. The examainers would then take this as "proof" that she cheated and she'd be sent home.

We should be worried about the people we don't hear about.
I wonder if nanopore sequencing will ever be good enough to fill in those gaps?
Banned for a week because someone complained to the admins because I made a comment that "Windows is not necessarily the best operating system". Gave up soon after.
(I suspect you already know this, but I find it is an interesting topic so I'll post it for others)

It should probably be noted when talking about the history of science during the so called dark ages that the Islamic Empire covered a very vast area. The society was homogeneous only in religion, not in 'race'.

My (limited) understanding is that their scientific collapse was the result of a series of (religious in nature) bans on various scientific activities (translation, dissection, etc) This seems to have had fair reaching effects on the viability of their Empire and has likely been the cause of the Muslim worlds comparatively limited scientific activity since then.

Therefore I would expect that the decline of Islamic science is not a symptom of a perceived performance deficiency among people with Arab names, but rather the cause. Considering the apparently solely cultural nature of the issue, any observed phenomenon could be subject to extremely rapid change and is likely to have a very significant number of outliers.
Profession (Asimov)
The dual-licensing nature of the Ruby license has always meant that you could distribute it in a BSD-like fashion (with an extra restriction on naming). They simply moved the "or" part of the license from GPL to BSD. Ruby was never distributed in a GPL-like-only fashion. The changeover is mostly a non-issue.
In other news Foxconn pledges to buy a ton of robots...
I have to give the nod to Dollar Shave Club. It's hard to make a commercial that's actually funny without it feeling forced, and they pulled it off.
That works for just fine for concave non self intersecting polys as well - all the signed areas (albeit overlapping) cancel appropriately.

(scribble scribble) ... Edit: and for self intersecting, it gives the area of the poly where winding is odd.
That's Google Documents + web photoshop etc. Most of the value will be in the quality of the editing UI, Google Documents vs DropBox documents.

Google Docs already turns your local filesystem into a "commodity." And what if Dropbox becomes Google Docs, that's not google/Apple sized. Then what?

The path to scale for Dropbox seems quite tricky.
We need fewer programmers; A rant. 
I have been trying, for the past week, to learn Ruby. I hoped to become my own technical co-founder, get into YC, and change the world. Going through some tutorials had confirmed that Ruby's no more difficult than VBA or Matlab. However, installing RoR on my PC has been a goddamned nightmare. What's wrong here? I've taught myself enough code to get work done. A quick Google search can usually get me the right answer in 5 minutes. But in this case, I've been banging my head against the wall for a week and have had no success.

Then it hit me: Writing code is easy! Any middle schooler can tell you that after writing x = 5 + 3, x = 8. The reason they don't write code is not because it's hard, but because of the disaster surrounding it. What the hell is a module, a controller, a script, a git, a gem, any and all of the essential parts of the program that are located far away from where you actually write your code? Why do they all require impossibly finicky install mechanisms?

We don't need more programmers, more high priests of file folders, git commands, and opaque installations. We need a way for the rest of us to actually work on ideas.
Weed is not addictive. I'll grant most of your other points about it being difficult to think for some people like me and you. However I have known and know many who are as productive, if not more, because of or despite their substance of choice.

For me, I really don't give a damn what kinds of drugs people take beyond heroin, crack, meth, and others that have a clear history of detrimental effects on the individual. As long as you are rock solid and reliable, that's all that matters.
Im am not sorry about the loss to BB. They totally dropped the ball on the whole company and there brand!
Hacker news should bump up comments of users who have a high stackoverflow karma.
Well blackbberry you were a tech company who refuse to innovate really I only see on of two possibilities become a android OEM or fail and get Google, Apple, or some other company to buy your name and patents. It's sad because they had plenty of time, but scoffed at ever lose the smartphone wars with such a significant lead.
It's great to see Colony Collapse get more attention but the article fails to mention one important factor. One of the reasons many people suspect CCD has been so devastating, whatever the root cause, is the very small gene-pool from which most commercial honeybees arise. This makes the entire industry extremely vulnerable, something highlighted by destruction called by the varroa[1] mite and several viruses[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa
[2] http://www.beeologics.com/iapv.asp
Other than being an awesome exposition of a Kickstarter project, this is an example of incredibly valuable feedback. Now thinking what I can do to stimulate even a fraction of this level of customer feedback in my startup...
which it's not

Jesus. Do we live in the same reality?

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/07/how_divers...

TL;DR: The Espenshade study found that African chromosomes (by the "one-drop rule") equaled 450 SAT points over Asian chromosomes as a college admissions factor.

(Not that actual genetic testing was used. It probably should be, though. Why encourage race fraud?)

Your link is to a study in which "affirmative action" is used in the sense it was originally implied, not the sense in which it is actually used:

Note that none of these constitute "reverse discrimination," an accusation affirmative action plans often face. In no case was a top-performing man denied a reward if he outperformed everyone else. The main effect the researchers found was an increase in the number of able women willing to participate.
Honest question, not trying to start a political argument - Isn't the research that leads to these patents fully funded by the US government? If so, shouldn't they really be freely licensed to anyone who wants to use them?

I know this is how it works with copyrights on US govt work, but I know nothing of US gov't patent policy.
Wr173.com updates and source now on github
That's actually on page 27 right now. :-)

Direct link: http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/1989/04/april-3-1989/
Getting Startup Jobs, If You Aren't a Programmer
Desactivar actualizaciones en Windows 8
Similar things are noticable when male names and female names are swapped.

It's evidence that there is still a lot of racism now. What do you think the 1950s were like?!
"They haven't been shown to be biased"

When I think about that question, I think about questions that would be harder for me (white caucasian) than somebody from another "race" or culture. That is easy: for example imagine selecting some kind of image puzzles involving kanjii symbols, or telling apart chinese faces. They are just images, right, so no bias? But it will be much more easy to tell them apart for somebody with a chinese background than for me.
If such questions exists that are biased against me, it seems at least very plausible that other questions could be biased against other "races" and cultures.
Another example I read about is how different cultures see the drawing of a box (a 3d wireframe). Apparently in western cultures people would see it as a drawing of a 3d box, whereas some poor test takers in Africa just saw a 2d drawing. This was then interpreted as Africans being less intelligent, when really they were just as correct as the people who saw the 3d shape. It just wasn't such a common meme where they lived to draw 3d shapes like that.
I think it's a nice interesting fact and it'll make a great conversation/story. Especially for those that you will work with on a constant basis, since they'll be the ones that will spend the time to know and work with you. But just be wary of the info that you present to the general public and your users.
If you could infect a target with a designer virus, why not just make it kill them directly? Unless you're the villain in a James Bond movie, of course ;)
This might be a good step, but we still haven't heard a plan from RIM on how they plan to adapt to the changing landscape. A shake up of upper management is good in principle, but it isn't an end to itself.
It is possible to set up a cross-site question filter on stackexchange.com (http://stackexchange.com/filters). As far as I can tell, it only allows filtering by tags, not full text, so your mileage may vary.
I take a similar approach with answering Google Analytics (implementation) questions, having answered ~10% of the tag's questions all time.

http://stackoverflow.com/tags/google-analytics/topusers
Did you see the bald guy with cream on his head is reading "The Lean Startup" at about 25s?
Wonders of the Universe for iPad is Amazing
Jim Balsillie resigns from RIM
This the old trope that now-a-days the pendulum has swung too far and women, blacks etc. are now in a privileged position compared to white, straight, anglo men.

Nonsense. And spreads the idea that all black people shouldn't be where they are in the company and are all tricksters who are rubbish at their job.
I am not a programmer but more of a BD person and outside thinker. I do agree a company should have both a BD/Programmer because a programmer doesn't want to sit around talking about a strategy or learn stats or projections. I don't know if that makes sense.
Job interviews aren't for the purpose of predicting future achievement? Say again?

there's a lot of ugly historical baggage where science has met race in the past.

There is indeed:

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/meta/gould-morton-lewis-2...

If that isn't ugly, what is?
++ for documentation. I'd say start with that first and think about how a brand new user will use your software. How do I install? What are the dependencies? Etc.

Good documentation can easily trump bad code and architecture.
Why doesn't it "look good?" Oh, noes - am I a witch?

Witch, no. Racist, maybe.
Night of the Murder