skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The article doesn't say foreign students found Ms. Miller's history/rhetoric class stimulating. It says they work harder and take the class more seriously. That certainly matches what I've observed regarding foreign students.

Could it be that foreign students (correctly) believe they have more to gain from doing well in Ms. Millers history and rhetoric classes at Babson college? When considering qualifications for jobs or further study, I think that grades are relatively weightier for foreign born students than for American born students.

I also think that performance in Ms. Miller's class probably isn't of much long term importance for students not interested in rhetoric or history. If there is a problem with our educational system, it is the fact that these students are wasting their time and money in a class they don't care about and won't use.
"I like to download things, but I also like the idea of being able to use multiple machines and have everything — my settings, files, and apps all sync up intelligently. Download an MP3 on one computer and listen to it on another. Version control lets you do that."

No, synchronization lets you do that. Version control lets you maintain history about the changes to a file or set of files. They are very different things. Live Mesh, for instance, gives a great sync experience that is pretty much exactly what the poster says he wants, but doesn't have history.
> What is more, often a brand contributes the majority of a product's value. Consider the entire apparel industry.

I disagree. I think you're confusing cause and effect. I'm sure Gap, Armani, Gucci, etc., started out with great products and amateur brands. As the products gained traction, they gained more resources to develop the brand.

> So if you can't figure out how to brand a product and you can't figure out how to market a product and you can't figure out how to sell a product, I don't think it is very clever to build the product.

Building a product and finding a market for it is step 1. Branding/growth is step 2.
but they don't seem to be doing that since "expressive" is one of the detection aspects they mention.
Elite pro beauty & fashion career
Elitepro beauty course is one of the few schools that has as part of its training program a labor market orientation, and programs to help you get jobs as makeup artists and as commercial cosmetic salespeople.
Next up: "My Inspiring Canadian Teachers," including Dr. Rupert Ray, English and Film: In the 1970s he was teaching using Alfred Hitchcock, The Prisoner, and The Hobbit as examples. Or Mr. Godlewski, who demonstrated a property of mechanics by performing a gymnastic side lever in the classroom holding on to the wall radiator. Or perhaps Dr. Hiltz, who popped popcorn to demonstrate the statistical model of atomic decay.

I suspect teaching is like any other profession. There is a normal distribution of "evangelism" skill, and every student is going to be exposed to a few inspiring teachers, a lot of decent teachers, and a couple of shockingly boring teachers.

In the end, school is what you make of it. With any luck you will have an interest in the subjects taught by the inspiring teachers you encounter, and will find self-motivation for the subjects taught by the boring teachers.
Rubber Manufacturers Have Repealed Export Restrictions
Other problem I see is the same as the poop vaporizer in the Jack Black's movie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envy_%28film%29. The fact that the shit is nowhere to be seen does not mean that it is not there anymore.

We know this kid figured out a natural process to fade plastic away. The problem with every process is that it has outputs as well as inputs. It is not a black hole where all plastic bags get lost forever. For the project to "solve" any environment problem (for future waste disposal, what is spread already is likely to remain so) it has to avoid creating dangerous byproducts itself. One risk I see is that very likely the bacteria in this experiment produce some sort of greenhouse gas that is released all over the atmosphere; which is a bad outcome, instead of having that same material buried in a single, concentrated (aka. small), non-livable place.
I dunno. I think it's just the stigma of being a dropout. Also, I think it's generally a good thing to go to college for the intrinsic value, and nothing I'm doing is so critical that it can't wait.

I actually had a 3.8 GPA before my last semester. Going back immediately after dealing with a brain tumor/surgery kinda screwed things up, though I should have been theoretically unaffected by it.

A friend of mine who is far more successful than I'll ever be and shouldn't even be using "go back" and "school" in the same sentence, just went back, and after a semester, he's done again. So I dunno.

I think there have been some pretty big changes with how companies, jobs, and credentials work ("High Res Society" kinda stuff), and the culture will lag behind 10-20 years.
schumacher clean. fixed width. easy to read. and the "a" looks like an "a" should.
Comcast Settles $16M P2P Lawsuit
Well, there is already a lot of plastic in the oceans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

This could be useful for helping to break down that island if it was seeded with a slurry of this bacteria.
This was published 1.5 years ago, what has happened since?
"Whether or not you think it's a good language for building real world applications, it does have a lot of going for it when considered as a teaching language."

You must really hate kids?
How old is your daughter? At a certain point in my education I figured out I could complete all my homework in class, or simply not bother doing it at all without any detrimental affect on my grade. This had the added bonus of allowing me to do whatever I wanted after school, and giving me something to occupy myself with while the teacher retaught the material to the slow kids. I almost always did the homework assigned by one class in the next, which resulted in rarely paying any attention in class.
Unicode Code Converter - Useful Tool
Online dating websites
This is the third time this has been posted here.
Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012183
Genetics is complicated
We know a little
There is still much more to learn
Genes interact in intricate ways

Sort of like the circuits/chips designed by a genetic algorithm work seemingly by magic and only within a certain temperature and only with that particular chip.
Guessing the Teachers Password: the problem with most education systems
Some discussion from the last time this story was posted:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=732123
I don't think Google Nexus has the ability of multitouch. At the hardware level maybe, but it's not available in the browser and such from what I've heard.
> Why should a changed climate result in worse droughts in places that are susceptible to drought?

"Theoretical and climate model studies suggest that, in a climate that is warming due to increasing greenhouse gases, a greater increase is expected in extreme precipitation, as compared to the mean. Hence, anthropogenic influence may be easier to detect in extreme precipitation than in the mean. This is because extreme precipitation is controlled by the availability of water vapour, while mean precipitation is controlled by the ability of the atmosphere to radiate long-wave energy (released as latent heat by condensation) to space, and the latter is restricted by increasing greenhouse gases." --- http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/ccw/chapter2.pdf

> Might it not lead to more rain in some drought-stricken places and less rain in some rainy places?

Yes, in fact some IPCC analysis suggests that North America will see e.g., increased crop variety and yields by 2080, and also e.g., a 40% decrease in Texan farmers' net income and more agricultural disease.

But although climate change isn't uniformly and strictly bad news, it is likely that some places will see catastrophic effects and that in aggregate the changes will be more problematic than beneficial for humans.
It's not an island. It's not a visibly dense field of floating debris. The process of disintegration means that the plastic particulate in much of the affected region is too small to be seen The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has one of the highest levels known of plastic particulate suspended in the upper water column. Only the continuous addition of new plastic that keeps the consentrations that high, the plastic actually decomposes fairly quickly.
I'm only theorizing here, but I don't think its trying to look at a specific part of the brain, then determine what you're thinking. It seems to me like there are common actions people can perform that render similar results across everyone (for example it seems like smiling is one) if that is true then you simply need to train the computer what your particular brain looks like after performing this action. Once you have that, you simply map that action to your desired output. The concept is simple (though i'm sure the implementation is wildly complex)
Business plan (response to Jason Cohen's "Don't write a business plan")
If that is true, why not move there? Or are you a masochist?
Ask HN: Better duplicate identification
What if each submission caused the HN engine to download the title from the referenced page. It's exceedingly unlikely that there'll be two different useful pages with the same HTML title, but whenever there's a duplicate submission, the title should be the same.

It's previously been suggested that duplications could/should be detected by looking at the page source, but surely it would be enough 99.9% of the time just to check for duplication of the <title> contents.

Thoughts? Problems? Counter-suggestions?
That's sort of ad hominem. Would DHH be a better choice? I mean honestly, I find it hard to take seriously that Bjarne Stroustrup is not credentialed to be a voice in this discussion.
What is it about the remainings?
Two comments about that (not by me):

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/05/27/its-i...

It is not scientifically possible to decompose plastic, the only thing that happens is that the plastic is broken into even smaller microscopic bits that are filtered through all polluted areas; the water is the most dangerous because plankton and other small organisms filter feed the small bits of plastic and it travels through the food chain back to us and other animals.

http://seeinggreen.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/05/can-plastic...

The inputs are cheap, maintaining the required temperature takes little energy because microbes produce heat as they work, and the only outputs are water and tiny levels of carbon dioxide -- each microbe produces only 0.01 per cent of its own infinitesimal weight in carbon dioxide, said Burd.
It's ironic, if there were a reliable way to break the DRM, I'd be incented to buy lots of Kindle books at even above the paperback price.

right now I just can't stand the idea of paying almost as much as a real book for something that I can't share and will die with my kindle in a couple of years.
B&N Nook Device Rooted via SD Slot
The reasons why many hackers (including myself) dislike PHP are totally irrelevant to its merits as a teaching language.

I don't like the type system, I don't like how OOP is seemingly an afterthought, I don't like the mishmash of syntax or the irregularities in function naming. These are fine reasons for a programmer to eschew it, but I can't see how they would be a hindrance to anyone learning the concepts of programming.
World Market In Bluesh Trend
Makes sense to me. It also seems that a good part of the dupes come from the fact that the full URL is used as the identifier. And often times that URL has a lot of referrer garbage and similar data in it. It would seem there could be some logic to try and pare URLs down somewhat in the comparator code.
Yep, mostly semantic markup. Sure then you could not avoid
some extra div there and here, but that did not come even near the <td> mess. I've tried to stay away from divitis and classitis as much as possible.
The Blog Doctor
I think that's just going too far. I think the analogy to a Physics professor never building a bridge is a bit silly. You might as well say a "Physics professor that never swims or enjoys a warm breeze on a hot summer's day."

A Computer Science theoretician's work is somewhat more closely tied to programming. I mean, let's be serious.
I think that's just "eyebrows went up, smiling muscles contracted, blinked", etc. for the look-my-emoticon-changed marketing effect. They also claim there's a gyroscope in the device.

The more advanced EEG tech is quite real. It's a stretch to say that it's interacting with your "thoughts" ... making something like PacMan move forward/backward is a similar sensation to when you first figured out how to wiggle your nose (the mental exercise, not the muscle movement).
2010: The Decade Of Online Work
20 Great Conversion Rate Optimization Resources
I don't believe that most college classes are a waste. Some are, but most will teach you something. The least they will do is to teach you to communicate to people that study the particular discipline. If we were to only learn what was "useful" to our professions, we would not be (1) very happy or (2) very good at what we do. There is a reason why cross discipline education is still around and while some people do a poor job of delivering such education, we should not condemn the whole paradigm.

What I find is that the biggest indicator of someone's success is not how well they know the subject matter of any given class, but how hard they try to do something. So doing well in Ms. Miller's class will not give you wads of useful knowledge but it will teach you how to tackle an unfamiliar problem. Doing well in her class will then demonstrate to others that you are willing to do more than your peers to overcome professional challenges, which ultimately translates into being a better professional.
I wonder if those that blindly (pun intended) jumped on the 'no to stemcell research' bandwagon a few years ago are already feeling a bit guilty or not.

The obvious possibilities of stem cell research were so vast that I was really surprised at the level of support this Luddite stance received.
The archaeological picture is actually a lot more complex than this article suggests, with strong evidence of large 'factories' around Europe, even in Britain, feeding extensive trading networks. No coins for 300 years? Sutton Hoo (early 7th century) contained coins from 37 different Frankish mints!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo

I recommend Barbarians to Angels for a good archaeology-based look at the Dark Ages, even if it does strain a little too far to paint a sunny picture:

http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780393060751-2
Problems with the New Moonlight Covenant
I actually liked the post. I agree that there's both and ad-hominem and strawman-ish quality to it, but the original article was very accusatory toward those "lazy american students". If we're going to play that game, I think it's more than reasonable to turn that harsh glare toward the educators themselves. Individual teachers can be wonderful, but as a profession, I think that they have shown far more interest in protecting underperforming teachers from accountability than achieving excellence.

Maybe those lazy americans are just following deeds instead of words.
It helps a lot to know the right people. That's in addition to being smart. Also GTFO of Cincinnati helps too.
"Menu design draws some of its inspiration from newspaper layout, which puts the most important articles at the top right of the front page, where the eyes tend to be drawn. "

Is this true? I thought eyes are drawn to top left?
It's not like the Romans were exactly welcomed in all parts of Britain:

"We, the last men on earth, the last of the free, have been shielded till today by the very remoteness and the seclusion for which we are famed. We have enjoyed the impressiveness of the unknown. But today the boundary of Britain is exposed; beyond us lies no nation, nothing but waves and rocks and the Romans, more deadly still than they, for you find in them an arrogance which no reasonable submission can elude. Brigands of the world, they have exhausted the land by their indiscriminate plunder and now they ransack the sea. The wealth of an enemy excites their cupidity, his poverty their lust of power. East and West have failed to glut their maw. They are unique in being as violently tempted to attack the poor as the wealthy. Robbery, butchery, rapine, with false names they call Empire; and they make a wilderness and call it peace."

Part of what Calgacus is supposed to have said before the battle of Mons Graupius in North East Scotland.
I was in Value Village (a thrift store) a couple of years ago rummaging through their vinyl. I found a few albums and brought them to the checkout. The sixteen-year-old cashier looked at the records blankly for a moment and then consulted a note taped to the counter.

She looked back and forth a few times, and then asked me: "Um, are these seven in or twelve in?"

It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. "They're twelve in," I replied.
I know, and even if we don't cooperate, most of the consequences of climate change are not catastrophic. I'm aware of much of what the IPCC claims. Note that by "catastrophic", I mean "causing major harm to human civilization".

I don't consider requiring a few million people to relocate 100 meters inland over 100 years (or stay put and build landfill) to be catastrophic. Nor do I consider a few more hurricanes to be catastrophic -- we handle hurricanes adequately, and as our economy grows, handling them will become even cheaper (relative to our wealth). Caribbean nations will handle them adequately as well once they become richer.

Al Gore's and Greenpeace's dire predictions of the death of humanity are simply way outside the scientific consensus.

Incidentally, the response of climate to CO2 is logarithmic -- i.e., if doubling CO2 increases climate by 1 degree, then an eight-fold increase in CO2 will increase climate by 3 degrees (not 8). (This is all to leading order, of course.) Big increases are only marginally worse than small ones.
This is why you would likely have to "train" it.

edit:

here is a relevant link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40L3SGmcPDQ&feature=relat...

They begin training it at about 13 minutes in.
This seems like it would be a good time for OEMs to start breaking the hard link to Microsoft products, like bundling the installation media and not pre-installing it, for starters. They could even go one further and not pre-install all the other crap that typically comes on a new PC, problem solved...
Picking Your Co-Founders: What's luck got to do with it?
Momentum is key. Find a way to get yourself starting doing something (e.g. sign up for those language or dance classes or what not), and continuing is comparatively easy.
How fortunate we are that the author has pinpointed the problem with American education? It's the teachers!

What would be most helpful, given this discovery, would be for him to take, say, a month off from his job and go teach in a public school. You know, to show the other teachers how it's done. I mean, how hard can it be?
The financial aid available at top-tier schools is very generous, because so few low-income students make up the undergraduate body. If I recall correctly, at the top 120 colleges in the United States, only 3% of the student body come from families in the bottom quintile of household income.

As a result, schools such as Harvard[1] and Stanford[2] pay for all tuition for students with a household income of less than $60,000.

[1]: http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/financial_aid/inde...

[2]: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/finaid/undergrad/
In my company, the unwritten rule is that incompetent managers usually take up the responsibility of ordering lunch and office supplies. Occasionally, some nonsensical "compliance" paper work is generated to produce the illusion of work.
Dude,

I want you to succeed and reach your potential, and I don't like saying things like this, but .. you count your uniques in 1 digits?

Dude. I have users who do nothing but post every few weeks about how much they hate their teacher and they are kicking your ass by orders of magnitude. I had kind of come to believe 100 or so hits a day, uniques that is, was the new baseline for any kind of non-copypasta content. Even 10k hits a day is sort of ... meh? Great proof of concept if the trend is heading upwards but useless in and of itself?

What I'm trying to say here my friend is .. you can do a lot, LOT better than <10 uniques. Seriously, any blog at all can do better than that. You absolutely need to start a company blog ASAP and just write about ANYTHING. Mention anything you learnt in any aspect of development, you will have 100 uniques/day in a week and maybe more.

I guess what I'm trying to say is .. I like your attitude but geeze, you need to recalibrate your scale a bit. Sub 10 uniques a day is pitifully low and almost below just random; I'd almost advise you to check your DNS etc. Any kind of useful company blog whatsoever will put you orders of magnitude about that. Yes, erase the concept of "failing" from existence. But don't erase "improvement" as well....
I can't help but think about the "What did the Romans ever do for us?" scene from Life of Brian when reading this.
It may not be the dark ages but people losing their homes and having to deal with a bad credit rating for seven years is pretty bad.

Maybe in the dark ages, a second chance was a lot easier.

Today all our mistakes (finances, internet posts,errors of youth) will plague us for the rest of our lives (seems like).
I think most of the people on the 'no to stemcell research' bandwagon are more specifically against embryonic stem cell research. This was accomplished using 'adult stem cells' from the man's other eye, which I don't think many people have an issue with.
An A-Z of obsolete skills
For some pages the "stuff" that follows the obvious root URL is in fact required. There are no easy rules for paring down the URL - that would need to be done by hand, and most people who submit items don't take the time to do that.
For curiosity's sake, could you provide some examples?
I've taken various classes in Neurofeedback interaction design. The biggest obstacle to getting work done was the frustration of hooking electrodes up to your own scalp. Also, circa 2005 the lowest barrier of entry for interactivity was through a Flash gateway in the BioExplorer IDE (http://www.cyberevolution.com) ... whereas now I think with Air you could send event messages to something like processing.js, flot, jQuery, HTML5 <audio/video>, sparklines, etc.
to tell the truth there really isn't that much competition among SEs. Everyone is doing their own thing. Actually it's kinda getting dead, since a lot of people are giving up. Since it's hard building an audience

As far as actual competitor sites, most of them are generic, and we have much higher quality controls for posts. On Yahoo Answers, "What does the color red look like?" is a valid question, and on ours that gets deleted.

For design cues, I have a whole list of sites that I'll be using for inspiration.

No the SE platform doesn't let you A/B test anything. It's really very basic at this point. Pretty much all you can do is edit a CSS file, and add stuff to a box just above header, footer, 3 spots for ads.

So pretty much if you want to do anything, you need to add a ton of javascript and css.
I think this is a very naive proposition. Such an "indie section" would be the dream dwelling place of spammers, scammers, IP thieves and friends and the general filth that can be found on the bottom of the App Store.