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The Secret to Getting a Job at Google
Tom Friedman writes at the NYT that Google has determined that GPA's are worthless as a criteria for hiring, test scores are worthless, and brainteasers are a complete waste of time. " They don't predict anything," says Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google. "The No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it's not IQ. It's learning ability. It's the ability to process on the fly. It's the ability to pull together disparate bits of information. We assess that using structured behavioral interviews that we validate to make sure they're predictive." Many jobs at Google require math, computing and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Google has its eyes on much more and the least important attribute Google looks for is "expertise." "The expert will go: 'I've seen this 100 times before; here's what you do.' " Most of the time the nonexpert will come up with the same answer "because most of the time it's not that hard, "says Bock, "but once in a while they'll also come up with an answer that is totally new. And there is huge value in that." Finally Google looks for intellectual humility. "Without humility, you are unable to learn." It is why research shows that many graduates from hotshot business schools plateau. "Successful bright people rarely experience failure, and so they don't learn how to learn from that failure," says Bock. "What we've seen is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They'll argue like hell. They'll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, 'here's a new fact,' and they'll go, 'Oh, well, that changes things; you're right.' " You need a big ego and small ego in the same person at the same time."
Was Apple's SSL Flaw Deliberate?
Bruce Schneier writes that the three characteristics of a good backdoor are a low chance of discovery, high deniability if discovered, and minimal conspiracy to implement and says that the critical iOS and OSX vulnerability that Apple patched last week meets these criteria and could be an example of a deliberate change by a bad actor. "Look at the code. What caused the vulnerability is a single line of code," writes Schneier. "Since that statement isn't a conditional, it causes the whole procedure to terminate." If the Apple auditing system is any good, they will be able to trace this errant goto line to the specific login that made the change. "Was this done on purpose? I have no idea. But if I wanted to do something like this on purpose, this is exactly how I would do it."
Steve Bellovin has another take on the vulnerability. "It may have been an accident," writes Bellovin. "If it was enemy action, it was fairly clumsy. We can hope that Apple will announce the results of its investigation and review its test procedures."
Steve Bellovin has another take on the vulnerability. "It may have been an accident," writes Bellovin. "If it was enemy action, it was fairly clumsy. We can hope that Apple will announce the results of its investigation and review its test procedures."
Boeing Black Smartphone Self-Destructs if Tampered With
Reuters reports that Boeing has unveiled a smartphone that deletes all data and renders the device inoperable if any attempt to open the casing. "The Boeing Black phone is manufactured as a sealed device both with epoxy around the casing and with screws, the heads of which are covered with tamper proof covering to identify attempted disassembly," says a letter included in the FCC filing. "Any attempt to break open the casing of the device would trigger functions that would delete the data and software contained within the device and make the device inoperable." Boeing's Black phone will be sold primarily to government agencies and companies engaged in contractual activities with those agencies that are related to defense and homeland security. The device will be marketed and sold in a manner such that low level technical and operational information about the product will not be provided to the general public. "We saw a need for our customers in a certain market space" says Boeing spokeswoman Rebecca Yeamans.
Study Shows Mammogram Screenings Don't Reduce Cancer Death R
In the United States, about 37 million mammograms are performed annually at a cost of about $100 per mammogram and nearly three-quarters of women age 40 and over say they had a mammogram in the past year. Now the NYT reports that a study involving 90,000 women and lasting a quarter-century has added powerful new doubts about the value of the screening test for women of any age finding that the death rates from breast cancer and from all causes were the same in women who got mammograms and those who did not. "It will make women uncomfortable, and they should be uncomfortable," says screening expert Dr. Russell P. Harris who was not involved in the study. "The decision to have a mammogram should not be a slam dunk." An editorial accompanying the new study says that earlier studies that found mammograms helped women were done before the routine use of drugs like tamoxifen that sharply reduced the breast cancer death rate. In addition, many previous studies did not use the gold-standard methods of the clinical trial, randomly assigning women to be screened or not, noted the editorial's author, Dr. Mette Kalager. According to Kalager, with better treatments, like tamoxifen, it is less important to find cancers early. Also, she says, women in the study were aware of breast cancer and its dangers, unlike women in earlier studies who were more likely to ignore lumps. "As time goes by we do indeed need more efficient mechanisms to reconsider priorities and recommendations for mammography screening and other medical interventions," concludes Kalager. "This is not an easy task, because governments, research funders, scientists, and medical practitioners may have vested interests in continuing activities that are well established."
Steve Jobs to Appear on US Postage Stamp
Steven Musil writes at Cnet that the US Postal Service hopes Steve Jobs can do for it what he once did for Apple as the late Apple co-founder will be featured on a commemorative US postage stamp along with Johnny Carson, Ingrid Bergman, Elvis Presley, and James Brown. The former Apple CEO's stamp is still in the design stages and will be released at some point in 2015. Jobs, who passed away in 2011 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, has also been posthumously honored for his visionary achievements with a special Grammy Merit Award and a Disney Legends Award. Jobs was also inducted into the Bay Area Business Hall of Fame, has had a building at Pixar named after him, and was featured in an exhibit at the US Patent Office Museum. "The profitable first class mail business has been decimated by email over the past decade, thanks in no small part to the contributions of Steve Jobs and Apple," writes Derek Kessler. "It's no small feat to be so impactful that the USPS feels compelled to honor you despite the fact that the work that you've done is dismantling the core of their business."
DuckDuckGo Is Google's Tiniest, Fiercest Competitor
There's an interesting read by John Paul Titlow at Co.Labs about DuckDuckGo, a search engine launched in 2008 that is now doing 4 million search queries per day and growing 200-500% annually. DuckDuckGo's secret weapon is hardcore privacy. When you do a search from DuckDuckGo's website or one of its mobile apps, it doesn't know who you are. There are no user accounts. Your IP address isn't logged by default. The site doesn't use search cookies to keep track of what you do over time or where else you go online. "If you look at the logs of people's search sessions, they're the most personal thing on the Internet," says founder Gabriel Weinberg. "Unlike Facebook, where you choose what to post, with search you're typing in medical and financial problems and all sorts of other things. You're not thinking about the privacy implications of your search history." DuckDuckGo's no-holds-barred approach to privacy gives the search engine a unique selling point as Google gobbles up more private user data. "It was extreme at the time," says Weinberg. "And it still may be considered extreme by some people, but I think it's becoming less extreme nowadays. In the last year, it's become obvious why people don't want to be tracked."
Reading the news
Hi everyone,
I don't think that anyone will bother reading this journal. But it's a journal after all, and I have a spare minute (which doesn't happen often), because I'm commuting back home right now.
So I think that our new news site is great and I look forward into the bright future. No need to compulsively check /. again, because I know that better news will be here. And also if I stumble on something worthy, I will submit it too.
The "/." brings me to the question of how do we abbreviate our new site? SN? Barrabas was talking about how he wanted to setup a name submission form, with automatic checking if domain is available. Heck I even bought three domains that I wanted to suggest as possible names for voting, to prevent namesquatting. Also Barrabas elaborated about how he sees this as a two stage voting process, to make sure that the best name is selected. Understand me well - I'm not trolling that SN is a bad name, I just wonder if this planned voting on name was cancelled or there simply wasn't enough time, because bringing up slash is a plenty of work already.
But also, it is a relief to have this our great new site here. The old one became unbearable in recent years.
Also this place could become a real journal for me, when we will have MathJax support. Then I could write down my thoughts using language superior to english, and then I will even enjoy writing this journal. I wish that I had time to help implementing that myself. Heck here I am proposing a bounty: I will give 0.5 BTC to the person that will make MathJax a reality on this site. To claim the bounty just post a reply here with link to git commit, and a BTC address. Of course after it works here on this site :)
You can also find me on IRC as cosurgi, but sometimes I am away longer than a day or two. However I always stay logged in. If you want to say hi, you are welcome. If you start with "cosurgi:" then irssi client will highlight you in yellow, and I will notice you even after few days.
well, happy Soylenting!
Atmospheric Physicist Warns of Overselling Climate Change
Patrick Michaels writes in Forbes that atmospheric physicist Garth Paltridge has laid out several well-known uncertainties in climate forecasting including our inability to properly simulate clouds that are anything like what we see in the real world, the embarrassing lack of average surface warming now in its 17th year, and the fumbling (and contradictory) attempts to explain it away. According to Paltridge, an emeritus professor at the University of Tasmania and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, virtually all scientists directly involved in climate prediction are aware of the enormous uncertainties associated with their product. How then is it that those of them involved in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can put their hands on their hearts and maintain there is a 95 per cent probability that human emissions of carbon dioxide have caused most of the global warming that has occurred over the last several decades? In short, there is more than enough uncertainty about the forecasting of climate to allow normal human beings to be at least reasonably hopeful that global warming might not be nearly as bad as is currently touted. Climate scientists, and indeed scientists in general, are not so lucky. They have a lot to lose if time should prove them wrong. "In the light of all this, we have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem-or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem-in its effort to promote the cause," writes Paltridge. "It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis of society's respect for scientific endeavor."
South Korean Banks Punished for ID Theft
Michael Kitchen writes at Marketwatch that when companies in the US are hacked for customer information they often seem to react to such thefts with little more than a sigh and a shrug - if they even report it at all. But in South Korea, they don't mess around with ID theft. Korea's financial-services regulator announced Sunday that three firms which suffered the theft of consumers' data last year would be barred from issuing any new credit cards or extending any loans for three months. In addition the executives at the companies involved showed their contrition by going before television cameras and making deep bows and personal apologies. Some executives reportedly resigned over the incident, even though the alleged ID thieves were caught and arrested. The South Korean Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) said the companies had "neglected their legal duties of preventing any leakage of customer information."
The mother of the year should be a sterilized woman with two adopted children.
-- Paul Ehrlich
