gabestein

Adding to the list of great options here: I'm part of a team based out of MIT that has been building an open-source, hosted journal publishing platform called PubPub: https://pubpub.org

We're part of a group trying to address some of the larger ecosystem problems in knowledge creation and ownership discussed in this thread called the Knowledge Futures Group (https://kfg.mit.edu/). We've just setup a discourse forum for folks interested in working with us (https://discourse.knowledgefutures.org).

I wrote this. I don't know if it would actually work technically, and the politics of media coordination would be the hardest part. But I'd be interested in what y'all think.

What I liked most about this one: getting so absorbed in code that you forget to eat or sleep spans generations of computer scientists.

I think Pete is right on. Content marketing as a by-product of engineering, especially open-source engineering, is only going to become a bigger part of recruiting. Just look at GitHub. Super engineer-driven company, incredible content marketing generated by their engineers that helps them find folks.

Oh, they definitely do both, I'm not disputing that.

"As part of K.D.D., an algorithm was applied to the broader data set in efforts to detect patterns of behavior fitting models that had been previously established as being indicative of the activities of a terrorist cell."

http://m.vanityfair.com/online/eichenwald/2013/06/obama-veri...

Thanks to your help, I found a huge, obvious problem that was keeping the accuracy low and remarkable stable no matter what size of training data I tried. Here's the update: http://www.fastcolabs.com/3012908/tracking/im-beating-the-ns...

I know, but I still want to take it seriously, and thank you for your criticism.

Thanks. I solemnly swear to not abuse statistics, so I'll play around and update the piece.

The goal is to use this as a hook to get the public interested, then take them for the ride as I learn. That's why I tried to be really cautious about pointing out all the reasons why this particular model is bad.

Thanks for the feedback. As I'm fairly new to all of this, I'd love to hear how I can turn this into a more viable experiment.

Also, to defend myself a little: I think I'm at least being responsible by in no way claiming that it's statistically valid, and in fact making the point that it's not, and citing the reasons why, several times in the article.

I do stand by my point, however, that this helps the public understand the danger of metadata for data-mining, as well as introducing them to the pitfalls of statistics.

Author here. Beating everyone here to the punch: yes, I know this is pretty basic. I'm new to data-mining. I will happily take suggestions about what else to look for and how to improve it. Also, if anyone wants to donate their own Google Voice data to improve the model, I'd love to see how accurate we can get on some classification (I'm thinking family or not family, but open to suggestions).

You're quite welcome. Here's another one I found while thinking about your question:

http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/11/12/bitcoin-and-taxes...

Good luck, and thanks in advance for keeping in touch.

EDIT: Actually, that's not the one I was thinking of, although it's not bad. This is the more informative one:

http://www.dailydot.com/business/how-to-declare-bitcoins-tax...

I've been writing about Bitcoin for a while, so I'd definitely be interested to know where you end up on this. Please get in touch with me if you end up accepting payment in Bitcoin.

As for advice: consult your lawyer and accountant. The truth is Bitcoin is a huge grey area. There are some folks who think Bitcoin is an investment vehicle like gold or silver and should be reported as capital gains income.

http://qz.com/72637/why-bitcoin-millionaires-could-accidenta...

And there are others who would say that because you're using it as a form of payment, you should report it as regular income, probably in the same way you would income earned in a foreign currency.

http://www.businessinsider.com/do-you-have-to-pay-taxes-on-b...

Either way, you will need to report income in Bitcoin to your country's tax authority in some way or risk prosecution. Again, if you end up pursuing it, I'd be very interested in hearing the story.

What about when we start needing fewer people to tell the computers what to do? This is already happening with automated testing and QA, self-reproducing code, etc. Someone mused in response to the XKCD StackSort comic that you could probably build anything just by putting together random code on StackOverflow and integration testing the results. What happens to the 'tell the computers' jobs then?

I ask myself: As technologists, do we have an obligation to understand the ramifications - macroeconomic, sociological and personal - of our work's disruption?