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warbler73

81 karma · joined October 15, 2022

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warbler73··on Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
Being promoted until you are no longer competent (or happy) is a long recognized corporate antipattern dynamic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

warbler73··on EU Gives Final Approval to Law That Will Force iPhone to Switch to USB-C
I really dislike USB-C, they have failed at a higher rate than previous USB connector styles.
warbler73··on Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
> I'd study for any test that was consequential to my future.

When I was really little a teacher referred me for a Stanford-Binet test, which was administered one on one by a psychiatrist. I did not know at the time what this test was, what a psychiatrist was, or that it would be consequential to my future since I tested above the range of the test and was put into a gifted program and thus got to avoid classes with students screaming and throwing chairs.

How should I have studied for the Stanford-Binet and what would have happened to my score if I did? What resources or guides do you use when studying for an IQ test and which would you recommend as suitable for someone 5 years old?

warbler73··on Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
The tests are a lot different than school exams based on coursework that you study for. Those exams you are taught content and told what will be on the test and how to prepare. There may be weekly quizzes, a midterm, a final, essays, graded homework. You receive back graded each quiz and exam that has marked exactly what you got wrong so you can focus on areas you have problems with for the final.

With standardized state tests, IQ tests, SAT/ACT, you don't get any feed back. For standardized state test you spend a lot of time on the test and are never given any feedback at all. When I was in school I just stopped taking them. I would sit there and not fill in anything. Why should I? The SAT was more of the same. I would not receive any feedback about what I got wrong and I have no idea what the questions will be or what I will be tested on. A lot of students then say why bother and just sit and fill in all A bubbles or leave their sheets blank. There is no point in studying for such a test as you have no idea what will be on the test.

Now the ACT is better since they have a test question bank and if you take it enough times you'll see most of the math and grammar questions. But the reading stuff is all random and lots of the questions arbitrary with even the authors of the excerpts used saying they have no idea what the correct answer is supposed to be about "what was the author's intent". Still how many students know any of this? Most teachers don't, fewer students.

With "high stakes" state standardized exams so many schools in the US spend most time in class drilling and prepping for these that everyone loses interest. It is incredibly boring prepping for this stuff and they push test prep for over 10-13 years, badgering the students about how important it is for a test they will get no feedback from, and which is taking up the majority of time in over a decade of state education. Everyone sane checks out and gives up.

warbler73··on Fake Books
Wow! Fantastic article. With AI generated stuff I expect we are going to see 99% of the book market saturated with generated nonsense, then collapse as a market for lemons.
warbler73··on Study: Electroshock therapy more successful for depression than ketamine
How does it compare to peyote?
warbler73··on 27 years ago, Hoover offered free international flights with any £100 purchase
Wow thanks for that, really good. Love the alligator.
warbler73··on The Mysterious Patient in Room 23: The Hermit Baroness
Wow her family was profoundly evil.

https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2020-04-21/ty-article-magazin...

> In March 1945, it said, just before the end of World War II, Margit held a large party in the town of Rechnitz on the Austrian-Hungarian border to fete her Nazi friends. She, the daughter and heiress of European baron and tycoon Heinrich Thyssen, and her friends drank and danced the night away.

> At the height of the evening, just for fun, 12 of the guests boarded trucks or walked to a nearby field, where 180 Jewish slave laborers who had been building fortifications were assembled. They had already been forced to dig a large pit, strip, and get down on their knees. The guests took turns shooting them to death before returning to the party. The organizer of this operation was Margit’s lover Hans Joachim Oldenberg. Margit’s husband, Count Ivan Batthyany, Sacha’s grandfather’s brother, was also at the party.

warbler73··on Most Americans think money comes before mission at U.S. news organizations
GE owned NBC from 1986 to 2013.
warbler73··on Some people who appear to be in a coma may be conscious
Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo_case
warbler73··on Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
As Nelson in The Simpsons would say: "Ha ha!"

In other words, this was a foreseeable consequence.

> Without SAT and ACT scores, he explained, the job of admitting students had become more subjective and more time-consuming.

It's amazing we are doing a nationwide experiment to find this out.

warbler73··on Living descendants of Mark Antony
It's not proven at all. He takes speculative jumps to close gaps:

> My conclusion is that his younger sister, Queen Nana (AD 295–337), married King Mirian III of Caucasian Iberia (AD 290–362).

In a footnote he admits that the ancestry of the wife of Mirian III is unknown.

warbler73··on Show HN: I'm trying to guess your personality by your comments with an NLP model
Have to ask... do you log or otherwise save ip address and usernames and if so what are your future plans for this info.
warbler73··on Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere
Was going from memory. Official number was $2.7 billion in 1991 dollars. So now it's $1000, or someone said $299, 9 million times less.
warbler73··on Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere
To be clear 23andMe does not do sequencing. They check for certain markers.

However full sequencing IS available and runs around $1000.

If I recall right the first human genome sequenced cost about $1 trillion. But we now have much better algorithms, mostly due to algorithms from works such as Knuth's AOCP.

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