One of the great "watch ads for money" stories from the dotcom era was AllAdvantage. They were set to have a blockbuster IPO when Fortune magazine ran a story on them entitled "Meet the Dumbest Dotcom in the World," and that pretty much killed it.
Once upon a time there was a Spedia with their browser plugin which tracked, IIRC, what ads you've seen and when. You had to see a new ad every 60 seconds otherwise you wouldn't get paid.
This first concert in my mind is that while programming core concepts have not changed much in 30 years, the stuff you put on your resume has. Laws don't change very often and only in small details ways. A lawyer can still reference a law passed hundreds of years ago and it's relevant in a real world in the job scenario. Programming on the other hand, is far less stable. Furthermore, employers are always looking for key words in the resume. Do you know this language and this framework? I don't think they care or evening look for core concepts (maybe a problem in it's in right).
"The polygraph, for example, which measures physiological changes such as blood pressure, respiration and skin conductivity, only achieves an accuracy level of around 50%..."
Where does that statistic come from? I've definitely read that polygraphs have over 90% success as long as you account for obvious "counter measures". Basically, the person administering the test can clearly see if you are pulling tricks to defeat it.
How many minimum wage workers are there? If you only look at the number of current minimum wage workers there may not be many, but we are talking about raising the minimum wage to $15. That means everyone under $15/hr is affected. So, I think the real question is how many people are making less than $15/hr. I skimmed this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S... and it seems that median personal income is somewhere around 30K in the US. Well, $15/hr of full time work is about 31K. Therefor the number of people who will see a rise in their wages is potentially very large. So, I think that the problems with price increases are a real issue.
Another issue I thought of is this. If min wage workers all suddenly have wage increases by law, then businesses like fast food chains might just replace many them with machines. I mean, you already know your McDonald's burger is disgusting, so probably wont mind if it gets pooped out of a dispenser like pudding. So, this policy may simply lead to layoffs.
If the median is the middle number, wouldn't that mean that around half of america makes less than $15/hr? The same wiki page says "slightly under 45% had incomes below $25,000". So a raise to $15/hr would potentially impact half the county.
Wawa in Pennsylvania has touch-screen sandwich ordering machines, and has since a pilot program in 2001. It briefly gained national attention when a edited clip surfaced of Mitt Romney being "amazed" by the machines.
How can they possibly know the accuracy of health predictions based on Facebook likes? I don't see any info about when data was collected, but I would think that you need at least a decade of data to make an accurate determination. That would be the entire history of Facebook.
Know that this is a thing that exists in the world. At least one HNer could get it approximately tomorrow if they wanted it. Typical form is a large equity grant which, for a publicly traded company, is indistinguishable from cash with a vesting schedule.
pg is an HNer. It's safe to assume that several other HNers have reputations that would allow them to write such a ticket. Do you assert that someone whose only marketable skills revolved around software development could achieve such a thing?
I believe that a (relative) large number of HNers could pull 2M in comp annually. I believe very, very few could do so in a purely-technical, no-management role though...PG included.
