skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It seems to me that in a truly meritocratic and also capitalistic society, the market would decide what the metric is, because public opinion of what constitutes "merit" will be aligned with what produces success in the market.
How to Put Together a Great Team for Your New Startup
And adding to the notion of teamwork and the critical importance of people in general and not just Turing we have the oft overlooked William Thomas Tutte [1], and Tommy Flowers [2] to remember. People seem to focus entirely on the Enigma decrypts and overlook the Lorenz cipher "Ultra" intelligence.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._T._Tutte

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
My takeaway: Don't do business with ServerBeach.

They get a standard (my standard) one week benefit-of-the-doubt treatment awaiting the other side of the story. You just never know. Although, as someone said, it's hard to imagine a reason for taking down 1.5 million blogs. You'd think and hope that your hosting provider might have people who do a little thinking before taking such action. If it is the case that nobody from ServerBeach picked-up the phone to try to contact the customer there's something seriously wrong with that company.
Even if the word has its origins in satire, a characteristic feature of human language is that it changes over time. The word “meritocracy” has been repurposed, and is now a legitimate ideal. The problem with the word is twofold: first, thinking that you live in a meritocratic society when you don’t, and second, thinking that merit is objectively measurable. The author does touch on both points, but I think it benefits from reframing.

Fact is, “programming” means a lot of different things to different people, and most of it is easy enough that anyone could do it if they wanted to, and were given the opportunity to learn. The last point is key, because most people don’t get the chance to learn about programming, whether it’s not offered them, or they simply don’t see it as the last word in career choices. If you’d rather take photographs or make sushi, you don’t need to be a programmer. If you’re from a poor country where there aren’t any computers available, you’ve got other things on your mind.

I strive to be at the top of my field; I’m sure many on HN feel the same way. But people with that desire form a vanishingly small fraction of the already small fraction of people who program. And people who will succeed in that accomplishment form an infinitesimally small proportion of that.

Just have perspective.
> California, with a huge population, should be vastly more influential than Montana.

Justify this, please.
I think your Tiny and our Tiny are clearly quite different ;)
I could agree if keywords were replaced by syntax, but I didn't get that impression from the release notes.
The only change needed in the headline is to replace Pearson with Serverbeach. Im no fan of Pearson, or DMCA notices, but yes Serverbeach is the dangerous incompetent here.
> It's analogous to IQ tests having cultural biases, but people's claiming they measure intelligence objectively.

No contradiction there. IQ tests clearly aren't completely unbiased and perfectly objective, but they don't have to live up to that impossible standard. Humans have a general intelligence factor G, and an IQ test can approximate it reasonably well. As far as I know IQ tests are the best and most objective way we have of measuring G.

If we can't even call our most objective tools objective, then we're quickly entering the territory of total relativism.

The idea that the outcome of IQ tests is mostly determined by cultural biases, which is what you suggest, seems extremely unlikely. Cultural aspects will make some demographics score better than other demographics, but smart people within a demographic will surely still outperform their peers. So I'm very skeptical about your claims.
Because HN actually has the best content, it doesn't have to do any of the other things you mention to get users. So it can focus on the thing that really matters, which is the value that users get from the site, which in the case of HN has nothing to do with graphic design or trend-following social features.

If something is low quality, but many people use it anyway, that means that there is a part of it that is truly world class.
2) Most computer programmers are white

Maybe in the USA, but in that context this is not surprising, as 72% of the USA is white. (The male part is a separate discussion) Do you have proof that when considering the entire world, most computer programmers are still white?
The great irony is that many people trumpeting the value of meritocracy are otherwise very well-acquainted with Hayekian arguments and public choice.

Having a true meritocracy is impossible if you take public choice and Hayek seriously. We don't have all the knowledge necessary to set up a truly objective and universal system for sifting the chaft from the wheat, or even an idea of how to frame that knowledge. And even if we did have that ability, the people and institutions that the meritocracy is embedded in would twist that meritocracy and pervert its original aims.

It's obvious when stated, but if you suggest that patriarchy or white supremacy might be undermining some imagined meritocracy, you're some kind of bitter idiot who is just looking for reason to complain.
Mike Bostock of D3 fame is basically unrivaled in data visualization using HTML, SVG, and JS:

http://bost.ocks.org/mike/

Most of the code is open source, too:

https://github.com/mbostock

Awesome that he's working at the NYT alongside people like Nate Silver.
I think the key dichotomy here is between creating a successful product at the core of a company and creating a successful system that is able to repeatedly generate, select, and distribute products that fill market needs. Disney, 3M, and Apple are all great examples of "blockbuster factories" that are able to repeatedly innovate into the next field of play.
Those who despise meritocracy simply lack, well, intelligence to understand it.

Merit is not about IQ, merit is about knowledge and experience in a field.

A cook can't build a bridge, a carpenter can't rule a kingdom, a ballet dancer can't run wall street, an altar boy can't run the vatican.

We can't know it all, so we specialize, and the more we specialize the more valuable we are in that particular field. So if you want to know about quantum mechanics you ask Stephen Hawking not Emeril Lagasse, but if you want to know about beef stew you know who's the right man. Now guess who would be the perfect fit for the Newton's Chair and who for the Food Network's primetime show?

That's meritocracy, it's not about IQ, it's about merits, you earn them, you can't take them or buy them, you just fucking earn them with sweat and tears.
>Microsoft was actively creating patches that broke other browsers

Do you realize there wasn't a official specs set at that time? Different browsers came up with "patches"/features own there own. From the blink tag to Ajax, all were proprietary to each browser.

>offering discounts to prevent companies like Dell from selling competing operating systems.

Isn't that what Google is doing with android too?

>Just picture it, run Microsoft update Chrome and Firefox break now what?

I don't believe it ever happened or ever will. If Microsoft had to go that route, they would have done it before losing the biggest chunk of the browser share.
I'm not sure why this person decided to redefine the essence of meritocracy to mean the biased notion of evaluated merit that keeps the powerful in power. This whole rant falls apart if you assume an honest desire to promote based on merit, which is often what people mean when they claim to be meritocratic. Granted they don't execute it properly, and aren't fully honest when they say that they value it, but lets get one thing straight:

meritocracy is not "a system for centralizing authority in the hands of those who already have it".

This rant is without base.
As far as I am aware, meritocracy in the original definition is one which is ruled by people on the basis of their paper qualifications, which leads them to fundamentally believe that they are justified in holding power over others, despite the fact that those qualifications are often a consequence of a lot more than just ability. Part of the warning was that meritocracies can become both tautological and blind to corruption as the bits of paper become the main measure of the right to hold power.
People using it.
Maybe I should have been clearer. I don't mean that it wouldn't be possible, just not a successful business model like it is now.
Neither was downloading porn, but we all sucked it up and did it. I remember Netscape being included with my ISP's floppy disks so I never had to download it.
Now that the language syntax is mostly stabilized, i am hoping that more focus will go to the standard library. Currently it seems rather ad hoc and not always consistent (which is understandable because of all the language changes).
The article seems full of hatred against "white men". A group of people, for some reason, has found it worth its time to do some activity. This group then trains more, invest more time, and compounding interests makes them better.

Other groups see their success and feel like they don't belong. It's human - nothing mean in it.

Why is Christophe Lemaitre one of the only decent white sprinters? Because. Why are boys dropping out more and more while girls study? Because. Why are there mostly asian in advanced classes, so much that some university (by their own words) do now discriminate against them in admissions? Because. Why are there mostly white men in the IT industry?

Well - I guess you can now answer yourself.

There is no conspiracy (except maybe for the universities preferring people from some ethnicities while other people are more qualified) - it's just a bunch of self maintaining tendency.

Something interesting - look at the posts on 9gag to try to get the current untold opinions - apparently some white people are developing an inferiority complex on math and sciences when they have asian classmates. Self exclusion, once again.

So drop the hatred and see the meritocracy. It's all around us.

For the first time in history, with a very low amount of capital and education, a human being can create a profitable company. You should be celebrating such an achievement, not bashing meritocracy.

EDIT: Downvote as much as you want, but I'd be interested to know for which reason exactly Occam razor is not being applied here
If a middle-class white boy who literally never had a job before getting a sweet internship at some cutting edge technology company can eventually, through practice, become a passable computer programmer, anyone can do it.

-- This is not of the form you reference, though

This is an argument about barriers to skill acquisition, and thus representative expression, not one of either innate or even actual ability or qualification level. Its not "conflating ability with opportunities" anymore than it is saying "there is learning by doing" and since the "doing is not evenly distributed"[1], therefore neither is the "learning".[2] Author is in part arguing that the only "doing" that matters is "branded doing" (ie, doing it for XYZ company or school), as as that is how the next level of doing is rationed, and there is therefore a recursive effect. This may or may not be a great argument, but I think its different than the one you allude to. In particular the low-threshold state and the (implied) recursive mechanism seem to have a more interesting dynamic.

______

[1] Or the option, etc.

[2] This depends on (or implies) a certain elemental/relative triviality of the task.
Google's European Privacy Woes
If you need more Bootstrap in your life
it's reassuring to finally see a confession that feminism is an exercise in blind faith, and is hence of no use to rational people.

There are volumes of feminism that I understand, and could explain to you, in purely rational terms. The vast, vast bulk of beliefs I have that are considered "feminist" fall into this category. So no, I don't think feminism is an exercise in blind faith.

Provisional reliance on the beliefs of trusted second parties is only one of my many ways of knowing.

I also object to calling it "blind faith" because it's not blind. I've vetted the source. It is a kind of faith. Maybe you can call it "provisional faith". If there is solid evidence I certainly use that first. But in many cases there is no evidence. For example, when someone says they were raped I will rarely ever see any conclusive "evidence" one way or the other, so any evidence-based approach to understanding will fail.
> A meritocracy is a system for centralizing authority in the hands of those who already have it, and ensuring that authority is only distributed to others like them or those who aren’t but are willing to play by their rules.

If we take this as a definition for 'meritocracy', what do we call situations where there is an objective test of skill that everyone is equally prepared to meet, but not everyone is equally able to meet? Does the author dispute that such a thing can exist? If so, does the dispute lie in the existence of an 'objective test' or in 'equal preparation'?
I would love to be able to switch to a visualization where each state is tracked by color according to how it votes now. (Or even better, starting at a random date.) That would make the great long-term swap between Republicans and Democrats much more obvious.

Yes, we can mouse-over. But you can't easily mouse-over, scroll, and keep the mouse-over going.
I'm not a fan of the threads program either. It is too easy to not learn any 'hardcore' CS with it. I took Devices and Information Internetworks. Doing some like Media and People (very popular for reasons to be mentioned), you didn't have to take CS2200, CS3251, or ECE2030/1. Granted I didn't take any compilers/VM classes, but I did take several low-level classes as I feel like it's hard to truly understand CS basics without understanding how a computer works from the base up. I think the switch to allowing easier tracks is to get more people interested, but at the cost of a degree which is not truly well rounded.
Oh hey, welcome to the internet. Yup, Google changed the I'm feeling lucky button a while ago.
I've been in the hosting industry for some time, and I'm always appalled at how quickly stories like this, regarding hosting providers, escalate. It's such a contrast between startups in this community that make a mistake ("I'm sure they just made a mistake, and they'll get it cleared up"), versus a hosting company ("they're incompetent, dangerous loons and I'm never giving them my business"). This attitude prevails beyond Hacker News, and finds itself into support tickets at hosting providers. I can't tell you how much support tickets made me resent the customers; the gloves come off when there's a mistake. I've personally been called much worse than has been shown in this thread thus far after I helped people in tickets.

Honestly, I have to ask this -- why do those in the technical community here feel like their hosting company is automatically out to get them? Hosting companies are drowning in policies, and acting upon DMCA complaints is a particularly dangerous area because the DMCA is very vague, particularly in the expediency of provider action. Is the hatred for hosting companies rooted in their ability to take you offline very quickly?

I deleted out of a thread here where I asked a similar question, because this is obviously a controversial topic, based upon those comments' scores within minutes. I just wish I understood why it's never okay for a hosting company to mess up, and why it's okay to attack them personally when they do.

Of course, having been on the other side of this line, I don't actually think ServerBeach erred here but I'm also hesitant to draw a conclusion without both sides of the story. It's an unfortunate situation for both sides, and this sort of thing never makes it better.
I'd get rid of political parties if I could, but I also think it's basically impossible, so the question then becomes how you deal with them. The best way to deal with them may not be at all how things would look if you could get rid of them. That's how I go from wanting to ban them to proposing proportional representation.
Yeah, the lack of native non-blocking bindings is quite the issue. There have been some attempts at implementing plain-PHP non-blocking drivers. One of the most impressive I've seen so far is phpdaemon: https://github.com/kakserpom/phpdaemon.
"What a meritocracy really protects us from is challenge."

Are you suggesting that we not choose who to work with by our assessments of their talent? I think I'll pass. Let us know how your business works out with that strategy.

This is an absurd misdiagnosis of the cause of underrepresentation in technology. Every computer science class I've been in has had a similar ratio of genders and ethnicities as the industry does. It's not that we're not finding talented female and minority developers; it's that there are so few of them to begin with. Even if changing the way we evaluate talent were a good idea, it wouldn't change the makeup of the industry.
Of course, there's also a good chance that any vegetables you buy from overseas were raised in animal feces of some sort.
Do you have a blog with your progress? I am trying to do something similar.

So far I got RaspBMC installed and AirPlay for photos and audio works great (not so much with videos so far). I love it that I can turn on the music real loud in the house from my iPhone.
Fully with you - slaughter sacred cows with a sharp wit ;-)
Well I guess I might as well just order a new 512 with element14 (I wish I knew about those guys).

Mine didn't ship at all with RS Components (+4 months waiting) then I complain on twitter to @RSComponents, 3 hours later I get an email from RS saying that my order just shipped... This is last SATURDAY! - so no 512 version :(

A couple hours later I get a reply from RS to my tweet saying: "Our records show that yours shipped LAST FRIDAY".

And now I still have to wait 21 more days until it arrives. Maybe if I order right now from element14, it may arrive earlier?!
It's not surprising to see the swaying support from citizens. What I'm curious about is given its a mixed economy and given the scale of the government (making change difficult), how much variability/difference is there between what the two parties can accomplish?

I wouldn't be surprised to see that difference is quite narrow (10%). Although it's hard to quantify this stuff.
"This is an argument about barriers to skill acquisition"

I don't see that argument in her post.
I think you're missing the point, which is not calling you racist, but opening your eyes to the fact that much of what you have achieved (and I don't mean you specifically, but the class of people the article adresses) is not a direct result of your effort but largely due to privilege. Thus, as a person of privilege you should use whatever political power you have - and you have quite a lot of it - to help rectify the situation, or, at least be constantly aware of it.
Many move to Toronto, New York, or the Valley. Personally, Toronto fit my lifestyle closer than Waterloo, but Waterloo has a higher concentration of actually smart people than Toronto does. The problem is that it is pretty damn boring after you graduate.
I'd expect there to be an outcry from more than just people concerned about kosher and halal food. Some of us who don't give a damn about religious food rules also have an aversion to disease ridden food.
I'm gonna install this on all my friends' computers!
Lexical analysis of 2012 presidential debates
"Who said they broke the law?"

Stop moving goalposts, grandparent was clearly peddling what amounts to an "upstanding member of the community" defense.

I'm not claiming Google broke any law, but they're not above the law, they can get investigated like anyone else.
Three Simple Principles Necessary for Success
Absolutely, the standard libraries are sorely desperate for some TLC. If anyone fancies themselves a connoisseur of batteries-included libraries in the vein of Python and Go, even just stubbing out a nice API without any code would go a long way towards directing the community development effort.
Does not work in IE6.
I was astonished to see it as well, but mainly because the logic was so poor. How is pretending that the attendance at conferences should reflect the world's population a useful addition to this discussion?
The site only indexes comments by pg, I guess in the 1000 comments that have been indexed, none of them talk mention clojure. I'm trying to hack around ThriftDB's search api [1] limitation of 1000 items [2] by sorting by different possible terms. The site currently only captures the top 1000 of the roughly ~8000 comments that pg has written (by score).

If anyone has a solution to this, please let me know!

[1]: http://www.hnsearch.com/api

[2]: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/hnsearch...
Google's Internal Meme Generator
Imagine there was an email from Larry Page to the search team along the lines of: "foobar.com is a fast growing vertical search engine that could be a huge commercial threat to us. Remove them from the search results so that fewer people will find out about it". That'd look kind of bad to most people. Or maybe a PM boasted in his performance review that a change he pushed for in a search widget increased clicks to Google properties by 10% and reduced clicks to Yahoo ones by 30%. It's that kind of thing the FTC is hoping to find during discovery, even if they don't have a case right now.

Of course they're not very likely to find that kind of stuff. More likely the hypothetical foobar.com fell down the rankings after a set of parameters were re-weighed using a ML algorithm and verified by having a bunch of human raters evaluate the search results before and after the change.

The worst part is that to maximize the chances of success of fishing expeditions like this, the FTC would of course try to extend the discovery to as many areas as possible. Including completely absurd ones, like supposed anti-competitive patent abuse. And that's why any article that lists all the things they're "investigating" Google for is going to dilute the already weak case even further.
I also want to throw in that your (apparent) belief that you don't take anyone's ideas on faith is utterly implausible. I think you're just blissfully unaware of where your ideas come from.
Fair enough. I prefer to think about what can be done to reduce their influence. I wouldn't actually ban them even if I could, freedom of association and all that, but it would be nicer if they didn't matter so much.
That, too, is clearly false. Perhaps not as successful, but advertising built plenty of powerful businesses long before this kind of technology became available.
This is silly and not at all new. I believe most crops require fertilizer and until very recently in human history it was either decomposing trash or some form of manure. Regardless they both contain nutrients that can be used to feed and grow other things...the whole "circle of life" and what have you!
Ha! If only it was that easy. What a funny misconception.
if it doesn't make sense to you, and you suggest using triggers (!) and mongodb map reduce (!) to get stats, then you are probably working at very small scale. There are a number of problems at small-medium to large scale, at which your mentioned solutions trivially fall apart. That's when you start using tools like Redis -- as scalpels to fix general-case solutions.
Well, the shrimp is already not kosher. :-)

Google indicates that Islamic authorities are in disagreement as to whether shrimp is halal.

Crustaceans eat all kinds of nasty things in their natural environment, btw.
Really interesting to see that the states weren't as split in most elections pre-Bush Sr.
Sure. One person, one vote.

If you need justification for that, well, that gets thornier. But I don't know what level of justification you're after, so let's start with this.