Amazing! I believe everybody has a strength, it's just not every strength is a celebrated achievement. I could've been a nationally ranked hopscotch player at 9, but alas...
This looks like a feature that LnkedIn could incorporate if it ends up being useful. From the candidate's standpoint it's a lot of duplicative work because much of this info is already on LI.
Also, for the tech industry, isn't it always assumed that a tech candidate is open to a better job whether or not it's obvious on the LI account. So I don't know how useful it is to keep your own employer from looking. If your employer believes that at any given time 80% of its workforce is vulnerable to turn over I think it would probably treat it's workforce better. Would Zynga have treated it's programmers better if it knew that many of them were ready to bolt?
The biggest obstacle is the assumption that most beggars use cash for cigarettes, liquor and drugs. Until this assumption is overcome, there will be reluctance to give cash.
The problem is that the "audition" is valuable work product that can be redeployed and has value to the employer whereas if a theatric audition is recorded and ever used in the final movie or anywhere, then that actor will get paid, period.
It's called inexperience and immaturity - people seriously expect a bunch of twenty something's who've never operated a business to get things right in 3 months? Or better yet, can you imagine the abuse if you worked for a startup led by 28 year old Steve Jobs today?
YC is tech specific; it's self selecting, so any tech entrepreneur regardless of color will apply to YC. Are there other tech accelerators with higher black applicants? Maybe the pipe starts in elementary school and not age 22. YC's efforts would be more effective inspiring inner city black children in nearby communities to take an interest in tech.
The problems of inner city schools go beyond the education system. It's like trying to fix Iraq by sending more doctors - it does little to address the root cause.
Inner city living is the emotional equivalent of a hovel: single parent never home or addicted, mother has different abusive boyfriend each month, a walk to school is an invitation to join a gang - living in the inner city is about surviving to see tomorrow. One cannot study if the basic needs are absent.
A better sell is cheaper quality projectors or larger screen Larger screen size for less. Consumers will buy more 60" TVs if they drop to sub-$500 territory. More 60" TVs mean more "smart" content can be stuffed along the margins. Hardware is a commodity, but viewership on smart TVs will be the rage. TV manufacturers will be like phone carriers - subsidize the hardware in order to hook them on the software.
I would like to fill in some gaps that's not addressed by the OP:
1. The object of a humane society is friction-less living whereby everybody's basic needs (food, shelter, safety) are met without having to "work" because robots have automated everything.
2. In this future, the energy required for automation is fully sustainable and automated meaning creation of energy is self-sustaining from origination (solar, nuclear) to distribution to maintenance without requiring human input.
3. The final assumption is that mankind has lost interest in war and conflict - religions and ideologies co-exist without being "personal" to the degree that advocates turn to violence as a persuasive measure.
I think the context and purpose of the article is more like this: Coursera + Kaggle performance is a legitimate a way to identify promising data scientists. As a hiring manager, I would be as interested in talking to these competitors as talking to a kid who just received his BS in computer science with a couple of machine learning/statistic classes under his belt.
I believe "Steve Jobs" personality would not survive a typical corporate environment. To begin with, he's anti-authoritarian. This quality alone means that he will be in constant combat with his managers - not good for a new hire. Secondly, he's disrespectful of legacy paradigms and established corporate policies as it relates to product development and execution.
The Oppenheimers have sold their entire stake in DeBeers - they've cashed out. They went from producing 80% of the global market (in the 90's) to 35%; clearly, the writing is on the wall, and without strong centralized vertical management, the diamond market will collapse.
It's bad because it's a vertical cartel, from mining to distribution. Cartels are illegal in that it limits the free market using artificial price controls. It's the artificial price controls that are illegal. Apple faces competition from Android, RIM and Win8. DeBeers diamonds do not face any competition from any other diamond producer because they spent 50 years establishing their network for "gem" quality diamonds. DeBeers is beyond marketing. Why did the U.S. government go after Microsoft? Standard Oil? Why did the U.S. prevent AT&T from merging with TMobile?
During these hard times, give people a platform to sell their existing diamonds at a higher price than what jewelry stores are willing to pay. Disrupt the "estate jewelry" market specifically in the diamond space by bringing forth a dedicated Ebay type site that also includes appraisals (automatic/electronic?) as a separate fee. This would encourage people to sell all those diamonds that's been stored in safe deposit boxes waiting to be sold.
A few problems:
1. The subject property breaks, who pays? Insurance is clearly necessary, but who will go through the time to process a claim? What if it breaks in transit between owners?
2. Theft. What's to keep an owner from disappearing with the item?
What a great idea for an API that's connected to an existing app/programming like Evernote/Notability/Office and linked to an established network of "member" vendors like UPS/FedexKinkos/USPS/colleges.