What do you know? Valleywag got everything wrong. Google is hiring, not laying off. Also, our interview scores actually correlate very well with on-the-job performance. Peter Seibel asked me if there was anything counterintuitive about the process and I said that people who got one low score but were hired anyway did well on-the-job. To me, that means the interview process is doing very well, not that it is broken. It means that we don't let one bad interview blackball a candidate. We'll keep interviewing, keep hiring, and keep analyzing the results to improve the process. And I guess Valleywag will keep doing what they do...
- Peter Norvig
from Bookmarklet
Further, while you hired a rare few people who got "1" scores on one their interviews, you rejected 99 percent of those people, and you have no idea how they would have performed. Those you did hire turned out to be top performers. Sounds broken to me. (I am the author of the Valleywag post in question.)
- Ryan Tate
Hi Ryan, thanks for commenting. First: we get over 1000 resumes a day. We can't hire all of them. I am painfully aware that a few of the people we don't hire would be as good or better than a few of the people we do. I feel bad for the people we have to reject who are equally qualified, but that is the nature of uncertain decision-making. Now what I said in the Seibel interview: we try...
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- Peter Norvig
It's a great shirt. Google is tops. No system is perfect -- so long as there's a weighting for intangibles and accounting for style differences between interviewer and interviewee, all should be fine.
- Christopher Galtenberg
Bump. Maybe Ryan didn't get a chance to see that you'd responded, Peter.
- Matt Cutts
Could you recommend any literature on data driven hiring practices? Google seems to use many analogical reasoning questions for screening applicants. It would be interesting if there was a relationship between analogical reasoning and productivity.
- Brandon Smietana
Peter, did you ever read Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink? Seems to me the other piece of the hiring process to analyze is the cost-benefit analysis - is it worth doing so many interviews and so much testing if people's first hunch is often the best indicator? (Which isn't exactly what Gladwell said, but partially).
- Laura Norvig
I'm very suspicious of relying on the first hunch. If you hired everyone based on your first hunches, you would discover that most of the time you are wrong. I've lost count of the number of times I've interviewed someone (either on-site or as a second phone interview), and learned that the previous interviewer did not ask them to write code, despite the position being one that required...
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- Piaw Na
Yeah! Always go with the _second_ hunch.
- Andrew C
"Free 13 lb HoneyBaked Ham® with the purchace of any home through me by December 25th 2009" Free ham - what'll they think of next!
- τorƍue
from Bookmarklet
Donuts have a particular smell. What makes them smell like they do?
- τorƍue
from Bookmarklet
" Yeast-raised doughnuts contain about 25% oil by weight, whereas cake doughnuts' oil content is around 20%, but they have extra fat included in the batter before frying."
- τorƍue
"Unfortunately for Lin Ring, her $14,600 surgical fingerprint switching procedure was able to fool the scanners, but could not prevent immigration officials from noticing the scars on her fingers."
- Steven Perez
from Bookmarklet
I just disable the whole thing. Go to the "Security Center" control panel and click "Change the way Security Center notifies me" on the left. Or disable the "Security Center" service (wscsvc).
- Gabe
Open Regedit >> Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced >> Create a REG_DWORD named EnableBalloonTips >> Set the value data to 0 >> Close Regedit >> Reboot
- AJ Batac
other than not using windows which is the best thing to do, you can disable the messages by clicking on something like "change the way windows notifies me"
- w43l
In the 'Windows Security Center' window click on the link that says 'Change the way the Security Center alerts me'. Select the way that you prefer to be alerted about security issues.
- Erdëm [virtus] GULTEKIN
You could get a Mac, but you might have to sell everything else you own to afford one. Instead try changing your Firewall settings. That way you can keep using a machine people still create programs for.
- Ciaoenrico
Thanks. It's so hard to find and kill all of these annoying settings. This is for my windows vm :)
- Paul Buchheit
What's with all the douchebags spamming the comments with "Don't use Windows"? Do they think they're being funny? Do they really think you don't already have a Mac and/or Linux? Do they not see the VMWare icon sitting RIGHT NEXT to the damn arrow?
- Gabe
Paul, you have a talent for asking all the questions I've always wanted to ask but forgot to.
- Gabor Cselle
Gabe, yes I think I'm being funny - welcome to Friendfeed :-)
- Jesse Stay
Easiest way to make it go away. Turn on Windows Firewall, and install Microsoft Security Essentials.
- Wizetux
OSX is also good target for viral stuff nowadays - viral distribution needs head-less (stupid) material for propagation... use Linux, chances to catch anything next to zero, And Ubuntu will give you (almost) same environment you had in Windows (and better system under hood)
- A.T.
I installed Ubuntu. I haven't seen this pop-up since then.
- Matt Cutts
Matt, that consistently works like a charm.
- Kamath (नमः)
@Paul - I installed Microsoft Security Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/Securit...) on my wife's laptop. So far it has been a big improvement (i.e., seems to work and doesn't trash or slow down the machine) over the several other antivirus products, both commercial and free, we tried before. I'd run it even in a VM'ed instance of Windows, as just booting into a network with other Windows boxes or hitting a few websites can put the VM image at risk (and be a risk to the rest of the network).
- DeWitt Clinton
Dewitt. I am definately installing Microsoft Security Essentials once my Nortons subscription is up. People: PAUL IS RUNNING A VIRTUAL MACHINE. End of public service announcent.
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
First comment is the right one. Have a nice journey with a Virtualized XP (and disable themes! :) )
- Assimo
it's somehow relieving to see that even pro's sometimes struggle with easy things like that :)
- Johannan Edelman
start>run>services.msc then disable windows security center service. it will go to the cyber space.
- Ali Sözkesen
Ali, BlackViper says that you have to do more than just disable the service: http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP... - "If you do not want the Security Center to monitor these functions for you, disabling this service is not enough. After rebooting the system, this service will again be placed into Automatic and started. While the service is in the started state, go...
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- Chris Heath
A co-worker of mine showed me a picture he took as he crossed the Alameda county line from the East. About 2 inches of snow by the side of the road -- the most he'd ever seen in ~15 years of living where he does.
- Stephen Mack
My brother-in-law is in town visiting for a couple of days and he says he's never been to the Bay Area when it's been this cold (he's coming form upstate NY).
- April Buchheit
"Video games might be regarded as an obsession for youngsters but in fact the average player is aged 35, often overweight, introverted and may be depressed, according to a U.S. study." - found via Amy: http://friendfeed.com/phoenixx
- Kol Tregaskes
from Bookmarklet
Interestingly, the research was conducted in the Seattle area, where I happen to live. And play videogames.
- joey
"Video games might be regarded as an obsession for youngsters but" + "looked at the behavior of 552 adults aged between 19 to 90" <-- does not compute.
- Alix Whitmire
"Average gamer is 35" - only for a year :-)
- Slappy Line
The researchers "knew" the results before they collected the data, more bad science.
- Robert Hafer
from iPhone
Fact of the day: sba.gov estimates that 99.7% of all U.S. employer firms are small businesses (<500 employees). Small busineesses account for half of all the employees in the private sector. There are only 17,000 large businesses (>500 people) in the U.S. PDF link: http://www.sba.gov/advo...
Thursday morning weight: 162 pounds. Thursday night weight: 168 pounds. (edit: to be clear, this was Thanksgiving, and I gained six pounds by eating and drinking a giant pile of food. No mystery or question. :)
Mine doesn't usually fluctuate by more than about 2 pounds. 6 pounds is definitely out of the norm :)
- Paul Buchheit
This does not look normal. What is the Sunday night weight?
- ashish
Water retention? People on diets are often told not to weight themselves more than about once a week because of water and other fluctuations. Could also be you stood on the scale funny. But my first guess would be that typical Thanksgiving fare is saltier and fattier than a normal day's intake, and you probably ate more of it. That could give you a triple-whammy.
- MaryB, BrandingBroadOfFF
Yes, I ate and drank quite a bit. I nearly exploded.
- Paul Buchheit
I read an article (trying to find now) that your "true" weight is your morning weight. It's very normal for your weight to fluctuate that much throughout the day.
- Georgia Diehl
Basically it just said morning is best due to food and fluid intake, as well as water retention.
- Georgia Diehl
6 pounds! haha that is awesome. I gained 4 lbs myself
- Susan Beebe
You are aware of the fact that it can take anywhere from 48 hours to 7 days (depending on your digestive system, the content of the food, the amount, and your metabolism) to fully eliminate the waste from a meal? Eating a large meal typically causes a "weight gain" until you get rid of the waste associated with it. If you ate an extra 4 pounds of food above what you normally consume, that right there is why you saw such a gain.
- April Russo (app103)
"We need people to help us tackle some of the hardest software engineering and computer science problems, including developing a ground-breaking programming system that decimates the time required to build a web application end-to-end." - http://www.asana.com/
Naturally :) What does it mean to decimate time though? Is that 10% less?
- Paul Buchheit
Yeah, decimate has such an awful sound, by in most real-world situations, getting rid of 10% of something is not such a big deal.
- j1m
The historical definition of decimate was to kill 1 in 10 of a group as punishment but the current accepted definition is to kill, destroy or remove a large percentage.
- Ed Millard
Asana is developing a functional reactive programming based server-synchronized web development framework. It includes a mixed presentation/logic mini language which gets compiled into JS. I'm sure they'd be happy to tell you more -- they're not terribly secretive.
- ⓞnor
@Micah, the original meaning of decimate is pretty hard to resist. Suggested rejoinder for anyone arguing with FakeAPStylebook types: if you just mean reduce, then say so.
- j1m
"Decimators of Time" sounds like a good band name
- David Vasileff
I was just thinking a few weeks ago that a new language may be just what I need for web programming. They seem to have an all-star team. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with.
- Amit Patel
FRP is a formalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...). More concretely, with Asana's system, you write a *function* that takes the model (database state, etc.) and returns presentation (HTML, etc.) -- just like a simple CGI script (only client-side). So far so ordinary, but with FRP the runtime evaluates the function *incrementally*. A small model change (a field value edit, or a new item in a list), causes only the necessary recalculation and an incremental page update.
- ⓞnor
This is coupled with a client/server sync/notification system, so real-time interfaces like FriendFeed's become the default, rather than requiring a big bundle of event listeners and careful handling of edge cases. The idea is that by eliminating event spaghetti, you can make really great interfaces much more easily. My understanding is they plan to use this to build workflow apps.
- ⓞnor
Nothing gets computer scientists excited like the possibility of developing a new programming language. Nothing makes on-the-line implementers cringe more than a new programming language. Ask Joel Splosky how Wasabi adoption is going outside of FogBugz. Of course, the probability of success is higher with languages that are more divergent than anything before it and solve real-world...
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- Bill Strathearn
As both someone who hates to have to deal with a new language, and at the same time loves coming up with new languages, the new language had better be either (a) hugely different and hugely more productive, or (b) my pet language. ;)
- Amit Patel
Easy coding of web-pages that update in real-time -- that sounds like something worth inventing a new programming language for. (I can't think of any other feature that I would consider to justify a new language :) )
- j1m
I don't think he was looking out the window. Heh. I was wondering where that path went (besides 'up').
- Kevin Fox
I think it was RMS who said: "In a world without walls who needs Windows(tm)?" Apparently, even open-source warriors find a window useful from time to time ;-)
- Tzury Bar Yochay
Pull the hand break (works for Bugs Bunny)
- Ozkan Altuner
say good bye and try to learn to fly? Read the in flight magazine and hope it saves me from death and pain?
- alphaxion
Work with the flight attendants to get the parachutes out and gasmasks out stat, and save as many lives as possible, if any at all. And get the hell out of there.
- Itachi
first one ;) may b u can change colors but as theme? definitely first one =]
- emre dede ve haremi
The one on the right caught my eye first than the one on the left because of the pictures. The text on the left catches my eye more than the one on the right.
- imabonehead
I love the photos on the second one best!! I like both designs, but like the first design a little better.
- Rachel Lea Fox
The one on the left with the top pic of the right swapped for the first pic. Not that I enjoy being difficult or anything. Is this Tinyprints?
- Heather Solos
I like the one on the left better, but the first picture could be replaced with the photo from the bottom left on the right version and it should say 2009 somewhere.
- Clare Dibble
I like the big picture on the right the best; the kids look great and they're facing the reader. And the pop of green brightens the card.
- m9m, Crone of FriendFeed
If it's a personal card, go with the one on the left. If it's for professional/business acquaintances, go with the one on the right.
- Curtiss Grymala
Easy -- on the Right. Bigger pictures over bigger fonts on a holiday card every time. They're not for reading, they're for looking at!
- Eric Borisch
I would like to put in a write-in candidate for a card with a picture of the whole family - Paul, April, Camilla, and Thomas. I like seeing the adults too!
- Robert Felty
I like the photos on the right, but I like the design on the left.
- Karen Padham Taylor
Thanks for your help, everyone!! :) I think I'm going to go with the design on the left, but replacing the picture on the left panel with the picture in the middle panel and putting the picture from the bottom left panel of the design on the right in the middle panel of the design on the left. (Am I confusing you yet?) I'm also going to make some changes on the font, as well.
- April Buchheit
They both look good, but with the change you decided on it'll work very nicely.
- James Stratford
Rob: Getting a picture of the whole family has proven to be a difficult task for the Buchheit family. Obtaining collective cooperation from all members (both children and adults) is a daunting endeavor.
- April Buchheit
Heather: Yes, this is from Tinyprints. :)
- April Buchheit
April - tell Paul I'm expecting the full family for 2010.
- Robert Felty
April, I work @TinyPrints so won't be much help deciding:) But, you know we're local in Mountain View right? Happy to set you (or anyone else) up with our best discount if you're interested. Feel free to reach out. I'll need to DM the code.
- Rick Bucich
April, it sounds like it'll turn out cute :) We have four kids and can't get them all to look at the camera either. I went with a single shot of each to save my sanity.
- Heather Solos
He says: E-mail is good for a few things, but it is too private for some things. E-mail is too specific, and I might want people to join in.
- Louis Gray
E-mail has a history that is more like filling out forms. (Subject example) On Twitter, Facebook, whatever, people write out a sentence (probably don't include vowels)...
- Louis Gray
(Paul on integration of chat/wall/email in Facebook) It is important to recognize these are different forms of communication. Is this public? Private? Who did this come from? If you take e-mail and IM, people know how it behaves, and you have to be careful if you change how those behave in a big way.
- Louis Gray
Methinks FF is the way to go. Email does need to move on.
- τorƍue
Paul: I think e-mail in the large part needs to go away in my opinion. The perfect email is the Amazon shipping notification. I get it and don't have to do anything about it, just hit archive.
- Louis Gray
Paul: I've come to realize I just get too much e-mail and people are always asking for things and they often use a lot of words. Things like Twitter encourage people to not use many words and I don't have to click to open it and ignore it. Email has some fundamental problems, because it's not a technical problem, it's a matter of social norms. People think I am going to respond, and you can get buried in your e-mail. You can spend half a day and it's not a good way to live.
- Louis Gray
Paul: Email has this expectation that it will just keep piling up until you take care of it all and that is a fundamental flaw.
- Louis Gray
Paul: E-mail is not going to go away until the robots kill us all.
- Louis Gray
Paul: If you get a message in your FB in box, you get an email. Same thing on FF if you get a DM you get an email. But it's not the same as an e-mail. It's shorter.
- Louis Gray
Paul (on FriendFeed): It is going to be around next week/month/year. (Not sure if he is authorized to say due to FB masters)
- Louis Gray
Paul: There is a lot going on at FB. It's a complex company. The FF team is working on a couple of infrastructure projects that will enable a lot of cool new things.
- Louis Gray
Paul: A lot of what goes on in the real time systems is what's going on right now. If I don't respond to IMs until the end of the day, it stops working. I can do that with e-mail.
- Louis Gray
Paul: One of the real weaknesses with email is that it does get buried. We tried to fix that with GMail with search so you could find it. One of the things about the Web is that everything has a URL and can be shared. E-mails don't have URLs.
- Louis Gray
Paul: I am very interested to see where Wave goes. I am very interested in the long term. When you have that many new ideas and that many new innovations it takes time to sand off the corners to make it usable. It will probably take a few years to get people comfortable to using it every day.
- Louis Gray
Paul: Wave is not a competitor to Twitter and Facebook. (Not a competitor to Friendfeed despite what Steve Gillmor says) It breaks down when you get too many people involved. My guess is the sweet spot is as a group collaboration tool.
- Louis Gray
Paul: I definitely think that (Google Chrome OS) is the direction of the future. It is a much nicer way of working. Having data stranded on a machine somewhere is kind of archaic. I like the model of everything being in GMail, accessible anywhere.
- Louis Gray
D. Modha and IBM's Blue Brain project reports progress in scaling up neural models to the size of a cat brain. Some day soon, computers may be able to cough up hair balls and barf on your sofa.
- Peter Norvig
from Bookmarklet
"By some researches, in cases of point-to-point delivery of high-speed data with binary encoding used over NetTcp bindings, there are very impressive results. Transporting on reasonably large and complex messages (using strong types) can reach almost 10.000 messages per CPU. So if you have a quad processor server you can perform over 40,000 messages."
- τorƍue
from Bookmarklet
In India, where I grew up we didn't have much TV... but this was one of the few TV shows we got to watch. It was so much fun to look forward to each new episode... I loved it :)
- Bindu Reddy
from Likaholix
I used to watch them too. Was a fan of Giant Robot.
- Vishy
@Bindu: Ah, Giant Robot! I remember this so well from my childhood. Thanks for sharing.
- Thaths
Hah hah. Great memories indeed. My place had one of the very few TV sets in our locality then, and you would see our TV room filled with the entire neighborhood's kids when Giant Robot aired. Needless to say, it was the source of great social capital for me - used to have privileged access to all the new bicycles in the colony :D
- Vamsee
A few years ago I watched Giant Robo: The Day the Earth Stood Still (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...), an animated series based on the same source material. I thought it was pretty good.
- Laurence Gonsalves
Another word and the forces will abolish all forms of Cilantro on this planet called Earth, message received from Planet Janet
- Janet
Message to Planet Janet: you know you love it with cilantro, baby.
- Steven Perez
Now see this is the interesting thing: if anybody posts, then you have to. So if everybody keeps posting, you'll just have to keep up with us. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
- CAJ, somewhere else
I CAN ATTEST THAT PEA IS, IN FACT, ALL SUGAR AND SPICE AND EVERYTHING NICE. Argue that, and let's see how mean you really wanna be. In the meantime, my head hurts so discuss this amongst yourselves. You can summarize it for me later.
- pea
Debating tip: never try to get in the last word. Always give your opponent the opportunity to get in the last word. By some sort of mysterious karmic law, your persuasiveness will improve immeasurably. :)
- Sean McBride
Steven Perez isn't a Bunneh!!! As long as he doesn't respond.
- Jimminy
This is a point that can never be proved, nor disproved until all but one of us are dead.
- Slappy Line
So... it's kind of like a "tontine" but with a pretty weak payoff?
- Mark "DerBingle" J
Hmmm, actually, it only needs to continue until Steven Perez is dead (of very old age, i of course hope). Our victory is guaranteed. Of course, if friendfeed gets eaten by fb, it's just going to be a race to get the last comment in before the site goes down.
- Slappy Line
It's okay, he's got a Catch-22 now. Steven Perez isn't a Bunneh, so long as he doesn't respond. And we all know he refutes his Bunneh status.
- Jimminy
It was real hawt in the town that night! IF I EDIT 18 hours later like now - is your last still last if comments are disabled? A hawt question.
- L Stephen Cleary
Steven is a Bunneh!!! He responded when I said he wasn't. Bunneh's can win if they want.
- Jimminy
Steven, I'm sure that not even you would resort to cheating to get the last word. I vote we just find the comment limit. It's gonna be a number ending in '0'
- Slappy Line
You did see where I said that I like my food scared and running, yeah? Mmmmm, ferret-ka-bobs ...
- Steven Perez
from IM
I do indeed see where this is headed, and no sir, I don't like it. *calls upon the forces of Voltron
- Tsali, The Native of FF
from IM
Sadly, the only Voltron to heed your call is the vehicle Voltron. And I disabled that yo-yo by pulling out the sparks plugs in the car feet.
- Steven Perez
from IM
And what is yo-yo code for in that last statement?
- pea
It's an old Navajo word for "punk-ass bitch".
- Steven Perez
from IM
very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy very busy
- Steven Perez
from IM
VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY
- Steven Perez
from IM
I think friendfeed only put the extra "Add comment" link at the bottom of threads because of this specific thread. It took me a full 20 seconds to scroll from one end of it to the other.
- Slappy Line
hmm... 800+ comments on this thread, and this is my first, and probably last comment on this thread. I wonder should I read all the comments, or just post?
- Mike Nencetti
Are you guys still trying to win?
- Steven Perez
from IM
23 years from now, Steven will still check his MSGoogle MyFriendFace feed every morning so he can respond to this post with 3,137,783 comments...
- joe is...
from iPod
After half a month there must have been moment you thought it would not be a real big deal if you eventually should NOT have the last word, I suppose?
- Ruud van Wijngaarden
Now that you've nearly reached 1100 comments, I realized that I hadn't officially "liked" this yet! Error rectified, though you're clearly a comment whore, you show great panache while doing so!
- Mark "DerBingle" J
Ohhh, you mean that place, which is totally faked by a #viciousbunneh who was in cahoots with the government in taking all the alfalfa plants into an underground hidden bunker.
- Tsali, The Native of FF
I will allow you to have the last word. But to take that last word you are surrendering your honor to a den of sightless whores.
- ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift
Eventually, the whole thread will go backwards to the beginning.
- WorldofHiglet
That sounds like more fun than I imagine you wanted it to.
- Steven Perez
from IM
It was a test. Honor is pride. A den of sightless whores is merely an event that you will carry forever. You have attained the 7th level of enlightenment.
- ‘-.-’ Tutivillus Grift
Considering that this thread has only been around since August, and has been shut down for the last two months, that's not too bad.
- Steven Perez
from IM
2012 is just the begining of the 13th Baktun, the long cont calendar doesn't actually run out until sometimes after 4772, that is of course if you stick with only Baktuns and don't use the other 4 higher counts, I just think FF will end in 4217 on planet Tersanzar :)
- Tsali, The Native of FF
Ah, right thread. In that thread, it's asked what you think you smell like. In this thread, I told you what I think you smell like.
- Steven Perez
from IM
I think this has lasted long enough. We already know what has to be the last word, it's already in the original quote. I will put it as the closing comment. I think we will all feel relieved we can now carry on to do greater things. For ourselves, our loved ones and the world.
- Ruud van Wijngaarden