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I learned about the Anatomy of a Hoax the hard way. When I was younger I tried to play a trick on my friends by making them think Google had hired me as their

I learned about the Anatomy of a Hoax the hard way. When I was younger I tried to play a trick on my friends by making them think Google had hired me as their youngest employee. Turns out I not only tricked my friends but half of the tech news/blogosphere, despite my press release being full of spelling and grammar errors. I learned a lot that week about the internet, the media, and my parents... Context: http://news.cnet.com/GoogleNewsdumpspartnerafterprankitemappears/2100-1025_3-6051690.html?tag=nefd.top http://news.cnet.com/GoogleNewsdumpspartnerafterprankitemapp...

martincmartin 14y ago
So, now that you've graduated college, did you apply to Google? Did you get the job?
- thomasvendetta 14y ago
  I never graduated, so I probably won't ever apply to Google.
  - andrewljohnson 14y ago
    That's unfortunately true - Google seems pretty snobbish with regards to education, just one of their ways of focusing on not getting any false positives in hiring. That certainly means they miss out on a lot of awesome programmers though - I work with absolutely stellar people who are college drop-outs, and have fired people with good degrees who did not perform. At least Google's policy gives start-ups more room to find amazing people.
    - gmurphy 14y ago
      I did not have a degree when Google hired me as an engineer; the engineer who referred me was also a drop-out; my manager, now a VP, also dropped out of college; and I have a co-worker who dropped out of high school. It's not the normal path, and you need to fill that blank in your resume with interesting personal projects and work, but Google is perfectly willing to hire designers and engineers without degrees. We do it all the time.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
    - earthboundkid 14y ago
      Anecdote time: I graduated college with a CS degree. My college CS friend did not. I am not a professional programmer today. My friend is Hampton Catlin, the inventor of Haml and Sass. Over-generalized moral of the story: People who have the patience to get a degree, aren't impatient enough to invent web changing technologies like Haml and Sass.
      - tincholio 14y ago
        > People who have the patience to get a degree, aren't impatient enough to invent web changing technologies like Haml and Sass. Over-generalized, indeed: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/
lallouz 14y ago
You should go as Larry again for halloween. teehee.
- thomasvendetta 14y ago
  haha, I've still got the costume..
stfu 14y ago
Funny story. But I am somewhat surprised that there is actually somebody out there who is reading these free PR distributors.
- tokenadult 14y ago
  I am somewhat surprised that there is actually somebody out there who is reading these free PR distributors Hacker News has submissions from press-release aggregation services all the time. (I'm thinking of PhysOrg and ScienceDaily, among quite a few others.) Many of those submissions reach the front page. Knowing how to write a gee-whiz press release about yourself is a skill that appears to go a long way in the tech community. P.S. Comments about PhysOrg: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077869 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077869 "Yes Physorg definitely has some of the worst articles on the internet." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3198249 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3198249 "Straight from the European Space Agency, cutting out the physorg blogspam: http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1116/ http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1116/ (press release), http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1116a/ http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1116a/ (video), http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/science_papers/heic1116.pdf http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/scien... (paper). "PhysOrg: just say no." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3611888 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3611888 "The physorg article summary is wrong, I think." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108857 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108857 "Phys.org is vacuous and often flat wrong." Comments about ScienceDaily: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992206 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992206 "Blogspam. "Original article (to which ScienceDaily has added precisely nothing): http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/abundance-of-rare-dna-changes-following-population-explosion-may-hold-common-disease-clues http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/abundance-of-rare-dn... "Underlying paper in Science (paywalled): http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/05/16/science.1219240 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/05/16/science.1... "Brief writeup from Nature discussing this paper and a couple of others on similar topics: http://www.nature.com/news/humans-riddled-with-rare-genetic-variants-1.10655 http://www.nature.com/news/humans-riddled-with-rare-genetic-... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108603 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108603 "Everything I've ever seen on HN -- I don't know about Reddit -- from ScienceDaily has been a cut-and-paste copy of something else available from nearer the original source. In some cases ScienceDaily's copy is distinctly worse than the original because it lacks relevant links, enlightening pictures, etc. " . . . . if you find something there and feel like sharing it, it's pretty much always best to take ten seconds to find the original source and submit that instead of ScienceDaily." Comments about both PhysOrg and ScienceDaily: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3689185 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3689185 "Why hasn't sciencedaily.com or physorg been banned from HN yet?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3875529 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3875529 "Original source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/news/pole-asymmetry.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/news/pole-asymmetry... "What ScienceDaily has added to this: (1) They've removed one of the figures. (2) They've removed links to the Hinode and SOHO websites. (3) They've added lots of largely irrelevant links of their own, all of course to their own site(s). "Please, everyone: stop linking to ScienceDaily and PhysOrg." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3867361 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3867361 "Those sources don't have RSS feeds, and ScienceDaily and PhysOrg have a bad habit of not linking to such things." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4083766 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4083766 "Added value in PhysOrg article: zero. "Please, everyone, stop submitting links from PhysOrg and ScienceDaily. I have never ever ever seen anything on those sites that isn't either (1) bullshit or (2) a recycled press release with zero (or often negative) added value. (Sometimes it's both at once.) It only takes ten seconds' googling to find the original source."

martincmartin 14y ago

So, now that you've graduated college, did you apply to Google? Did you get the job?

thomasvendetta 14y ago
I never graduated, so I probably won't ever apply to Google.
- andrewljohnson 14y ago
  That's unfortunately true - Google seems pretty snobbish with regards to education, just one of their ways of focusing on not getting any false positives in hiring. That certainly means they miss out on a lot of awesome programmers though - I work with absolutely stellar people who are college drop-outs, and have fired people with good degrees who did not perform. At least Google's policy gives start-ups more room to find amazing people.
  - gmurphy 14y ago
    I did not have a degree when Google hired me as an engineer; the engineer who referred me was also a drop-out; my manager, now a VP, also dropped out of college; and I have a co-worker who dropped out of high school. It's not the normal path, and you need to fill that blank in your resume with interesting personal projects and work, but Google is perfectly willing to hire designers and engineers without degrees. We do it all the time.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - earthboundkid 14y ago
    Anecdote time: I graduated college with a CS degree. My college CS friend did not. I am not a professional programmer today. My friend is Hampton Catlin, the inventor of Haml and Sass. Over-generalized moral of the story: People who have the patience to get a degree, aren't impatient enough to invent web changing technologies like Haml and Sass.
    - tincholio 14y ago
      > People who have the patience to get a degree, aren't impatient enough to invent web changing technologies like Haml and Sass. Over-generalized, indeed: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/

lallouz 14y ago

You should go as Larry again for halloween. teehee.

thomasvendetta 14y ago
haha, I've still got the costume..

stfu 14y ago

Funny story. But I am somewhat surprised that there is actually somebody out there who is reading these free PR distributors.

tokenadult 14y ago
I am somewhat surprised that there is actually somebody out there who is reading these free PR distributors Hacker News has submissions from press-release aggregation services all the time. (I'm thinking of PhysOrg and ScienceDaily, among quite a few others.) Many of those submissions reach the front page. Knowing how to write a gee-whiz press release about yourself is a skill that appears to go a long way in the tech community. P.S. Comments about PhysOrg: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077869 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3077869 "Yes Physorg definitely has some of the worst articles on the internet." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3198249 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3198249 "Straight from the European Space Agency, cutting out the physorg blogspam: http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1116/ http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1116/ (press release), http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1116a/ http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1116a/ (video), http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/science_papers/heic1116.pdf http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/releases/scien... (paper). "PhysOrg: just say no." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3611888 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3611888 "The physorg article summary is wrong, I think." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108857 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108857 "Phys.org is vacuous and often flat wrong." Comments about ScienceDaily: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992206 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3992206 "Blogspam. "Original article (to which ScienceDaily has added precisely nothing): http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/abundance-of-rare-dna-changes-following-population-explosion-may-hold-common-disease-clues http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/abundance-of-rare-dn... "Underlying paper in Science (paywalled): http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/05/16/science.1219240 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/05/16/science.1... "Brief writeup from Nature discussing this paper and a couple of others on similar topics: http://www.nature.com/news/humans-riddled-with-rare-genetic-variants-1.10655 http://www.nature.com/news/humans-riddled-with-rare-genetic-... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108603 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108603 "Everything I've ever seen on HN -- I don't know about Reddit -- from ScienceDaily has been a cut-and-paste copy of something else available from nearer the original source. In some cases ScienceDaily's copy is distinctly worse than the original because it lacks relevant links, enlightening pictures, etc. " . . . . if you find something there and feel like sharing it, it's pretty much always best to take ten seconds to find the original source and submit that instead of ScienceDaily." Comments about both PhysOrg and ScienceDaily: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3689185 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3689185 "Why hasn't sciencedaily.com or physorg been banned from HN yet?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3875529 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3875529 "Original source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/news/pole-asymmetry.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/news/pole-asymmetry... "What ScienceDaily has added to this: (1) They've removed one of the figures. (2) They've removed links to the Hinode and SOHO websites. (3) They've added lots of largely irrelevant links of their own, all of course to their own site(s). "Please, everyone: stop linking to ScienceDaily and PhysOrg." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3867361 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3867361 "Those sources don't have RSS feeds, and ScienceDaily and PhysOrg have a bad habit of not linking to such things." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4083766 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4083766 "Added value in PhysOrg article: zero. "Please, everyone, stop submitting links from PhysOrg and ScienceDaily. I have never ever ever seen anything on those sites that isn't either (1) bullshit or (2) a recycled press release with zero (or often negative) added value. (Sometimes it's both at once.) It only takes ten seconds' googling to find the original source."