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aneesh

3,263 karma · joined January 29, 2008

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aneesh··on Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown
This is not surprising. While cheating has always been around, it seems to be more prevalent now with high pressure and easy access.

I’ve talked to a bunch of teachers and school leaders, and see three main ways schools are handling AI use in assessments:

1. Punish it: Detect AI use on homework and take home exams; treat it as cheating.

2. Prevent it: Move to live assessments – oral or offline – that are hard to cheat on.

3. Embrace it: Assess the process, not the output.

The second one seems to be the only real answer for foundational subjects. And the third one can also work for more creative or project-based work.

aneesh··on Evaluation of five password managers
It's not cross-platform. Works great if everyone in your org only uses Chrome and Android, but fails for iOS users, or non-Chrome browsers.
aneesh··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2018)
Datavant | Senior Software Engineers (and other roles) | Full-time | San Francisco | ONSITE

Datavant helps healthcare companies protect their data, link it with other health data, and safely share it with partners.

We're looking for nice, smart, entrepreneurial engineers to help us organize the world's healthcare data. Our vision is backed by Roivant Sciences, Softbank and Founders Fund, and we recently closed a $40M funding round.

We're looking to hire multiple engineers at all levels, and especially engineers with a few years of professional experience.

Apply at https://datavant.com/careers/ and you'll hear from us promptly. If you have questions, feel free to email me directly my-hn-username (at) datavant.com

aneesh··on Coinbase Index Fund
That chart is log-scale. The index fell by more than half between December and February, but you wouldn't know it by glancing at the chart.
aneesh··on Alphabet Q3 Revenue up 24%
That's $3.4B per quarter, or $13.6B annualized run rate, putting it closer to #200 on the Fortune list by revenue.
aneesh··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2017)
Datavant [https://datavant.com/] | Software Engineers & Data Scientists | San Francisco, CA | full time, onsite, interns

Datavant is focused on using artificial intelligence to improve the clinical trial process. We're a small, ambitious SF-based team looking for extremely talented, entrepreneurial individuals from all backgrounds and experiences to join us. Backed by Roivant Sciences, we're combining best-in-class data science with Roivant’s biopharmaceutical research expertise. No healthcare experience required.

Email us at info@datavant.com to learn more.

aneesh··on Ask HN: How do I gauge the value of stock options that I have been offered?
Some thoughts (I'm neither a CPA nor a lawyer, so caveat emptor):

0) Make sure you understand 409a valuation and Alternative Minimum Tax. These two concepts will materially impact the post-tax value of late-stage private company options.

1) Clarify what the $1300 price is. Is it a 409a price, or the latest preferred share price, or something else? Also, get an exact number if $1300 is approximate.

2) Make sure your options are ISOs (and not NSOs). Ask for the count of total outstanding shares.

3) Try to get a history of the company's recent 409a valuations. This will give you some idea of how fast the fair market value is growing. Fair market value at time of exercise affects the taxes you owe.

4) If you leave the company, check how long you have to exercise your options or lose them. The standard is 90 days - this is something to be aware of so it doesn't surprise you.

aneesh··on Uber to Sell China Business to Rival Didi After Losing Billions
Different metrics. Alibaba raised $25B. Facebook's market cap was around $104B (intraday) upon their IPO, but they only raised about $16B in the offering.
aneesh··on Square stock drops 10%, is now less than IPO price
How did preferences make it worse? Generally, preferred shares convert to common in the event of an IPO, so preferences are discarded.
aneesh··on Ask HN: What do you need that you'd pay a lot for?
What tools do you use today, and what don't they do well enough?
aneesh··on How to Test Your Netflix Streaming Speed
> I think Netflix just shows what's the "maximum" speed needed to deliver their service.

Exactly this. Assuming your connection is faster than 3 Mbps, the number they are showing is neither the bandwidth your ISP is providing you, nor the instantaneous rate that bits are flowing to your home network. If you have a faster connection, they will send you large chunks of bits at a rate higher than 3 Mbps (upto 35 Mbps from what I've seen), and then send nothing for several seconds.

It seems that Netflix tops out at 5.8 Mbps and 1920x1080 no matter how capable your network connection is -- that's the highest number this test will produce.

aneesh··on When male CEOs have daughters, relative pay for women at their firms goes up
> Specifically, young single women in cities out-earn men, but their earning power erodes as they get older.

Not necessarily -- you're comparing two different generations. These young women may well continue to out-earn men as they get older.

aneesh··on Why 256 bit keys are large enough
Although you're right that a 256-bit RSA key is weaker than a 256-bit AES key, this is not an intrinsic property of symmetric vs asymmetric encryption. It has to do with how you search the key space. To break 256-bit RSA encryption, it is sufficient (not known whether it is necessary) to factor the 256-bit modulus n, whereas to break 256-bit AES, you have to essentially run AES with the whole keyspace of 2^256 keys.
aneesh··on The 9 Flavors Of Windows 8 Show The Key Difference Between Microsoft And Apple
OS X doesn't cost $29.99. It costs $29.99 plus the cost of Apple hardware (the cheapest of which is the $600 Mini). Unless you go the Hackintosh route, you can't install OS X on non-Apple hardware.

Whereas you can install your $100 Windows license on your choice of hardware devices that support it.

aneesh··on Apple Reports First Quarter Results: $13.06 Billion Net Profit
> For example, iCloud (all it offers) could have been implemented on top of AWS.

Not just "could have". It actually IS implemented on AWS. iCloud uses AWS and Windows Azure as its backend.

Source: http://venturebeat.com/2011/09/03/icloud-azure-amazon/

aneesh··on This photograph is free
Comparative advantage is actually even more subtle than that. Even if we're both better at photos than widgets, it's still beneficial for me to produce the one I'm better at relative to you (say photos), and for you to produce widgets. Then we can trade with each other and both gain from trade.
aneesh··on Protolol Jokes
Not quite right. In a little endian system, the least significant byte is the leftmost one (ie, lowest address). The order of bits within a byte is the same regardless of endianness.

So 10 is always 2.

aneesh··on Gmail accidentally resetting accounts
That saved chats folder in Gmail doesn't seem to be available to IMAP clients. Anyone know a way back up chats?
aneesh··on TechStars Network Wants One Startup Application To Rule Them All
In March 2009, I wrote:

PG made an interesting analogy to the college admissions process. How long until we see an "Common App" for seed firms, and a common decision timeline?

(http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=528071)

The answer was two years, apparently.

aneesh··on Hotmail launches accounts you can throw away
From the Windows Live Blog:

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archiv...

aneesh··on As HN: Startup name — dot com or not dot com?
I think the standard thing to do would be to get a dotcom, even if you have to be creative with the name. But there have been successes with non-dotcoms:

Drop.io was acquired (http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/29/facebook-acquires-drop-io-n...), and bit.ly seems to be doing well.

aneesh··on Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results—and denies it
Why do people think there's anything wrong here? Here's a (hypothetical) similar example:

In the 1990s, it probably look a lot of iterations, user studies, and market research to decide that copy/paste, undo, etc were the "right" set of features to include in a word processor. Do you think Google Docs re-did all that research? No, of course not. They probably just looked at Word and said, "we need to support these features". And there's nothing wrong with that. This is the exact same thing.

If you have a product out in the market, it's fair game for your competitors to look at and analyze its strengths and weaknesses, and use those to improve it's own product.

aneesh··on 90% of Y Combinator Startups Have Already Accepted The $150k Start Fund Offer
I think you mean min(series A valuation, cap).
aneesh··on Quora Blocks Startup Search Engines
Not quite true.

They do allow automated queries through their APIs for at least some of their search verticals.

http://code.google.com/more/#google-search

aneesh··on Equity in startups: Cap tables for Google, Apple, Genentech, Netscape, etc
Is "options, not stock" mainly to get around the 500 shareholder rule? How is the strike price of the options typically determined?
aneesh··on Equity in startups: Cap tables for Google, Apple, Genentech, Netscape, etc
But presumably they're also getting paid market salaries.
aneesh··on Inequality in Equalland
The next step is to decompose the wealth inequality into two metrics: inequality within an age-band, and inequality due to different life stages. In Equalland, the former is zero, so all inequality is due to the latter.

So, when you hear that the top 20% have X% of the wealth, keep in mind that the bar isn't 20%. A better bar is the 64% from Equalland.

aneesh··on Google Will Become an AI Company
1-800-BING-411 is still operational.

http://www.discoverbing.com/mobile/411/

aneesh··on Google Purchases 111 Eighth Avenue, NYC
Nope, odd numbers on one street will mean even numbers on the other.

  Odd numbers
  ---------------------------
  9th ave
  ---------------------------
  Even numbers


  **Google Building**


  Odd numbers
  ---------------------------
  8th ave
  ---------------------------
  Even numbers
aneesh··on Bingo Card Creator (etc) Annual Report
Do you have any designers you've worked with that you'd recommend, and have bandwidth for extra work? I'm awful at design, so I'm always on the lookout.
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