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Hasnain says:

This is a great piece by Jeff Atwood.

"What’s the most consistent piece of advice you get as a startup?

Always hire the best people. Never compromise in your hiring standards, no matter how big your company gets.

And it’s true. A great team can take an okay idea and transform it into an incredible, world-beating product.

But something has always bugged me about this advice. There’s an elephant in the room in the form of an implied clause: Always hire the best people… who are willing to live in San Francisco."

Posted on 2014-04-03T19:23:48+0000

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lelandbatey/whiteboardCleaner.md

Whiteboard Picture Cleaner - Shell one-liner/script to clean up and beautify photos of whiteboards! - Gist is a simple way to share snippets of text and code with others.

Click to view the original at gist.github.com

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A nation of slaves - Charlie's Diary

George Osborne has committed the Conservatives to targeting "full employment", saying that tax and welfare changes would help achieve it.

Click to view the original at antipope.org

Hasnain says:

"Today, in the political discourse of the west, it is almost unthinkably hard to ask a very simple question: why should we work?"

Posted on 2014-04-03T16:49:02+0000

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So You Think You're Smarter Than A CIA Agent

When 3,000 average citizens were asked to forecast global events, some consistently made predictions that turned out to be more accurate than those with classified intelligence.

Click to view the original at npr.org

Hasnain says:

"Galton was at a fair where about 800 people had tried to guess the weight of a dead ox in a competition. After the prize was awarded, Galton collected all the guesses so he could figure out how far off the mark the average guess was.

It turned out that most of the guesses were really bad — way too high or way too low. But when Galton averaged them together, he was shocked:

The dead ox weighed 1,198 pounds. The crowd's average: 1,197."

(slightly better source: http://www.economist.com/news/21589145-how-sort-best-rest-whos-good-forecasts)

Posted on 2014-04-02T16:52:19+0000

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The man who went looking for freedom

Fighting the system used to be dangerous anywhere in Eastern Europe. For one protester from a small Romanian village it was disastrous - and for his family.

Click to view the original at bbc.com

Hasnain says:

"When he left home, the car stuffed with placards and leaflets, my father knew what he was returning to. Yet he had no choice. For him the family was his country and the country was his family. If he did not fight for everyone else, he could not have hoped to put food on our own table. Or a shred of dignity in our lives. He left us out of desperation and moral conviction."

Posted on 2014-04-02T16:50:05+0000