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Tell us your naughty stories

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Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#311

Post by gjm11 »

Eliezer wrote: post #261
gjm11 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, of course not. I am , however, under the impression that if what you want to do (as here) is to minimize the probability that you get completely shafted by having had the test-setter choose answers complementary to yours, you should choose yours in a way that makes that probability low. Random choices are a very effective way of achieving that. [EDITED to add: not because "a random key fits a random lock" but rat…

Okay, you're right.

To whoever's downvoting Eliezer's comment above (I know at least two people have):

If you think he was stupidly wrong to issue the original challenge, downvote that. If you think he was right to issue the original challenge and stupidly wrong to back down when I argued, downvote me since presumably I'm even wronger. But what the hell sense does it make to downvote someone for being prepared to change his mind in the face of disagreement?

Incidentally #1: For an exposition of Eliezer's slightly-unconventional (but, for the avoidance of doubt, neither insane nor desperately ignorant) views on randomized algorithms, and some interesting discussion, see http://lesswrong.com/lw/vp/worse_than_random/ and http://lesswrong.com/lw/vq/the_weighted_majority_algorithm/ .

Incidentally #2: For the multiple-choice test, even better than choosing random answers is to choose random answers and them check them for low Kolmogorov complexity (in so far as that's possible; there are some theorems restricting it) and generate new random answers if the results are bad. You could turn this into a not-at-all-random algorithm that performs even better, given sufficient (vast) computing power: enumerate, and execute, all "cheap enough" computations that produce sets of answers; use this to put some suitable probability distribution on answer-sets (so that answers generated by cheaper computations are more probable, and then (deterministically) choose your answers to minimize the probability of failure. This is the kind of thing Eliezer has in mind when he claims that every randomized algorithm can be beaten by a derandomized one.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#312

Post by ajays »

In the late 90s, I was working in a univ lab as a post-doc, when the IPO market was hot. There there was this brokerage company ("Wit Capital") which would give out IPOs to us serfs on a first-come, first-served basis. They usually got very few shares (maybe a couple of 1000 at most), and gave out only 100 to each applicant; and the competition was fierce. I wrote a Perl script which would poll their site (usually they announced an IPO in the evening), and if there was an IPO, it would fill out the web forms and submit it immediately. (This was before WWW:Mechanize and all those modules). I got in on quite a few of those, flipped them, and made a nice sum.

Later, ETrade got in the game. They would give you at most 100 shares. But I realized that you could open multiple accounts in ETrade and increase your chances of getting the IPOs. So I opened 35 accounts in all. Once again I wrote Perl scripts to fill in the multi-step forms and submit them. This was pure screen scraping and LWP. Once again I got into a lot of IPOs. (Side note: but this time I decided to hang on to many of them, instead of flipping them immediately. Sadly, I ended up losing a good chunk of money too; but overall still came out quite ahead :) ).

-----

When I was in the univ lab, the dorms got ethernet. Lots of students started sharing their disks via Windows. I hacked together a "search engine" with smbclient and Perl which would crawl their shares and index their contents; and with a simple Perl+curses app, I could pick stuff and download it. Soon I had 10s of GBs of music, movies, etc.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#313

Post by j_baker »

moron4hire wrote: post #233

I had a really hard time convincing a large, corporate client to setup such basic things like a version control system, a central bug tracking system, or any kind of project documentation repository. Oh, did I mention this was only three years ago? It's 2007 and you're not using version control? Anyway, one day, another consultant who sat next to me got laid off and the company's IT guys never came around to remove h…

Abandoned desktops are the bigco employee's best friends.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#314

Post by SimHacker »

jasonkester wrote: post #42

I used to work as a salaried employee for a consulting firm. I'd record my hours on a timesheet so that they could bill the right clients, but anything over 40 hours a week was ignored on my paycheck. The understanding was that if ever your hours dropped below 40, you could bill an overhead number to make up for the difference, thus the fairness of not getting paid for overtime. So a year in, I only managed to find 3…

When I was a summer intern at Sun Microsystems in '87, working in building 1 in Mountain View, I turned in a time sheet with more than 8 hours on several days.

HR took me aside and insisted I put down any hours of any day that I worked more than 8 hours as overtime -- at time and a half -- even if other days were less than 8. Yes, insisted!

Well that got me off to a good start, and ruined me for life! Not only did I not have to work 8 hours every day as long as the total was 40 hours per week, the more irregular my hours were, the more money I made! Now I just can't break that habit.

I doubt Oracle treats their summer interns so well.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#315

Post by mathewsi »

Great question.

In middle-school I set up a shared folder on my school's computer network so my friends and I could share research with each other for a couple school projects.

It was removed by administrators within a couple of weeks, but it was helpful while it lasted.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#316

Post by sanswork »

jgrahamc wrote: post #11

I spent 6 months commuting between France and Germany flying on a Sunday night in one direction and a Friday night in the other. To avoid waiting in airports for any length of time I hacked my boarding passes. I was always flying in economy but I would check in on line and print my real boarding pass, then modify the PDF of the boarding pass and change it to a seat in business with whatever other indications where ne…

When I use to have to commute from Birmingham to London regularly I would always buy the economy ticket, get on the train in first class tell the attendants I didn't want a meal then go to sleep. Since I was always in a suit with a laptop bag sleeping no one bothered me and first class was always almost empty where economy would have people forced to stand in the areas at the end of the carriages.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#317

Post by wyclif »

TamDenholm wrote: post #239
tomedme wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Straight out of the 4HWW book, but something I now do a lot more - and so far so good!

Big fan of Tim Ferriss too but the saying is much older. Its attributed to Grace Hopper, a Rear Admiral in the Navy and a programmer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Murray_Hopper http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

I've got to disagree with you on Ferriss. The man is an utter fraud.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#318

Post by fnl »

jasonkester wrote: post #42

I used to work as a salaried employee for a consulting firm. I'd record my hours on a timesheet so that they could bill the right clients, but anything over 40 hours a week was ignored on my paycheck. The understanding was that if ever your hours dropped below 40, you could bill an overhead number to make up for the difference, thus the fairness of not getting paid for overtime. So a year in, I only managed to find 3…

So I hope you didn't sign, no matter the consequences! :P

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#319

Post by fnl »

jasonkester wrote: post #263
tpz wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't kid yourself. You were called into those meetings because, like at many companies, there was a promise of time in return for extra time put in but, like at many companies, that promise was never intended to go both ways. The first meeting was because you dared to utilize their promise and get some time in return. The second meeting was because their usual course of action in such first meetings backfired on the…

Thanks for paraphrasing, but all that was implied in what I wrote. It was company policy to promote the illusion of paid undertime at the expense of no paid overtime. The only problem was that they'd written the policy in a way that it could be exploited.

Ok, that answers my joke below :) Darn, I'd had not even negotiated the first time - nice hack, with 5 months some "real" payment :)

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#320

Post by tpz »

jasonkester wrote: post #263
tpz wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't kid yourself. You were called into those meetings because, like at many companies, there was a promise of time in return for extra time put in but, like at many companies, that promise was never intended to go both ways. The first meeting was because you dared to utilize their promise and get some time in return. The second meeting was because their usual course of action in such first meetings backfired on the…

Thanks for paraphrasing, but all that was implied in what I wrote. It was company policy to promote the illusion of paid undertime at the expense of no paid overtime. The only problem was that they'd written the policy in a way that it could be exploited.

I figured that either the original situation went over your head or that your post went over mine, so at least now I know which. That and that I should have gotten more sleep last night. :)

At least you were able to work the system there for a good six months. The vast majority of people finding themselves in that kind of work situation don't tend to fare nearly as well as you did.

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