8 months ago I installed Linux Mint on my wife's grandmother's computer and on my grandfather's computer. Since then I have received 1 tech support call from grandpa (couldn't find his bookmarks in Firefox) and 2 from grandma (mainly related to not understanding how Skype works. But that's an application issue. The OS recognized and worked correctly with the camera and mic instantly). It's just not that hard anymore. Things are stable and far more intuitive in desktop land.

To be fair, Windows is also much better today than it was 10 years ago (well, 7, anyway, or 8.1 + a skin to get a regular start menu, and we'll see about 10). Come to think of it, it's only OS X that's gotten markedly crappier in my opinion.

I seriously, seriously doubt, that Google, a global company that sees the world as its target market, only trained their algorithm on white people. They're Google engineers. They are not morons. It probably occurred to them to build a diverse sample set.

What happened in this case is, well, go look at the pictures. They're underexposed with a blue/gray color cast, making their skin look more "gorilla fur black" than "human of recent African ancestry brown." The low angle makes it look like they're slouching. The guy behind the girl makes it look like she has extra broad shoulders. And then she's making a monkey face at the camera, puffing up her cheeks and furrowing her brow. I'm not shocked.

Now give it a correctly-exposed image of a black person making a normal face and have it say "gorilla" and then we can talk.

White people are easier to photograph, particularly with digital cameras. These are positive media, so the more photons that strike the sensor, the cleaner the image will be (within the range of sensitivity). White skin reflects more light than dark skin. Regardless of what the algorithm is trained on, if you take the real-world photos people are actually making on their phone cameras, the pictures of white people will be better exposed and cleaner than those of black people. Better data in...better results out.

To be fair, if your first C program is:

#include<racist_version_of_stdio.h>

main()
{
        printf("Hello World, but only if you're white!");
}

Then yeah helloworld.c can be pretty fucking racist.

"A terrible social crime". Sounds like he's mad because his wife couldn't read Facebook.

Read the blog post again. http://insights.dice.com/2015/...

"I think that’s pretty cool, given we’re generating that automatically from job descriptions posted on our site. We also tried using the resume dataset, but the results were of a lower quality, as the skills extracted from resumes can be from different jobs."

It was extracted from job-postings, which would only identify Schelling points in the hiring industry, not skill clusters common to people with certain desirable skill sets; in other words, it "how to fudge your resume", rather than "how to find employees like the ones I have which I like".

It's not very reliable data.

They took the similarity vectors from the job postings, not from resumes, so rather than "what you're likely to know", they computed "what an employer is likely to want at the same time as wanting something else", and then declared that a similarity due to an already skewed cosine similarity metric. This happens because employers are more likely to copy other, similar job postings, or other job postings for companies in a similar business as them, or those of a company whose employees they wish to hire away.

They claimed that they tried using resumes, but that the resulting data was not as "clean"; uh... duh?

This visualization was not actually very useful, unless you are trying to design a resume to get yourself hired, regardless of your actual current capabilities.

I read that in the sense of, "Let's say that I'm in the position of being a general manager", as a hypothetical rather than something to be taken literally.

This isn't just about startups, this is across U.S. society—there is zero work-life balance.

Sure, every other company proclaims how great they are WRT work-life balance, but it's pure bullshit.

During hiring (for employees) and/or funding (for startups), if you give any evidence that you will ever put anything before the company (family, health, whatever, it doesn't matter) in ANY way, or ever draw a line in the sand about hours/commitment at ANY number, you are totally noncompetitive/nonfundable (they won't use these words) and won't be hired/be funded. If there is any evidence in your CV, online persona, or history that you have ever done any of these things, you won't be hired/funded.

Even after employment/funding, you have to keep this up. Sure, you may be asked (or even pressed) to "slow down," but it's superficial. The moment you do, positive evaluations/promotions/funding dries up; there is a perception that you're "not serious," "not committed," "not a good risk," or simply "not as capable/investment-worthy" as those *other* supermen/women that work 100+ hours a week (at least) and always put work first.

Yes, they want you to take a break, take care of yourself, and balance your life. But hey, if someone else delivers more value or growth more quickly... Well, they'd be nuts not to go with them instead, and hope you stay healthy in the meantime, all the best.

So, in the interest of your self/family/relationships you try to build a career that precisely demands that in order to keep it, you destroy your self/family/relationships. Depression is easy to fall into when your life will fall apart no matter what you do.

Secret struggle...

Thanks a hell of a lot. Now it's no longer a secret!

You know whats worse than todays pilots flying ancient airplanes, a brand new extravegantly expensive F-35 that cant match an F-16 or F-15E built in the 80s, planes built for a fraction of the price.

The F-35 might be an OK successor to the F-117 as a mostly stealth small bomber, but all indications are its completely worthless in a close in dogfight, you just have to read the leaked report from a recent test against an ancient F-16.

The F-35 simply doesnt have enough power, cant turn fast enough and bleeds off to much energy. The pilot found one manuever he could use to shake the F-16 but it consumed so much energy he had to run away and try to get the energy back.

The F-35 will also be horrible in the close air support role at which the A-10 excels, again at an even smaller fraction of the price tag.

F-35 is a classic jack of all trades and master of none.

There might have been a place for a few hundred of them but for the U.S. and every allied air force to think they are going to use one horrible design to replace every fighter they have is complete insanity. If it ever reaches full deployment, one accident or problem and the entire western world will have no air force. At least the Navy has the sense to keep the F-18 alive.

The F-35 is a tribute to the extent Lockheed has seized total control of Congress and the Pentagon, they could literally sell the Air Force actual turkeys for a hundred million a pop and get away with it.

Those B-52â(TM)s still flying today is because Northrop, has also seized control of the Air Forces generals made the B-2 so expensive and so few in number the Air Force canâ(TM)t afford to risk it in combat.

Besides the U.S. has been fighting people living in mud huts who have no air force and air defenses for over a decade, B-52â(TM)s and A-10â(TM)s work incredibly well in that role.

What is this "Apple" of which you speak? Oh, you mean the gay-supporting, headphone-selling, law-breaking, watch-making Apple that hasn't updated the Safari browser, and now announces products before they are ready?

Yes, well, but why would anybody want it that much? It's a Murdoch outlet, I mean? It's a bit like forging a $500 voucher for MacDonalds; you may be able to get $500's worth of food, but it would be MacDonalds.

Ironically, Iran is the Middle Country most likely to deserve our respect for things other than having nuclear capabilities. When you look beyond the demented ravings of some of their past leaders, they are on a significantly higher level than their neighbours in many respects. As far as I now, they do actually have a somewhat functional democracy, a rather good education system etc. I have always felt they have deserved better than the press they have tended to get since Khomeiny toppled the puppet shah; they are not saints, by any means, but neither are they devils incarnate. They could be our friends in the longer term, unlike for example IS.

Are you not displaying exactly that hubris and disdain here, which you criticise? You may have heard what I said, but you didn't listen. Most managers are simply managers: they eaderly lick the spittle off the faces of their superiors and do as they are told without really knowing all that much about things. Like you they don't listen to the people they manage, which is why a Dilbert-like situation arises, where engineers do what they know is right, if they care, and don't if they don't. The pointy-haired boss thinks he has figured out "how a system works and is solving problems to get it to work like he wants", to quote your own words.

There is a saying about engineers that I think illustrates the difference between them and managers: "Discussing with an engineer is like mud-wrestling with a pig. After a while, you realise that the pig enjoys it." A manager discusses simply to win the argument and get his will, whereas engineers discuss because they enjoy the mental exercise. To them a discussion with a fellow engineer is a win-win situation (sorry for using a buzzword) - even if they lose the argument, they gain insight. There may be managers who genuinely think like engineers, but they are few and far between, and they tend to be leaders, not merely managers.