skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I am a big proponent of smaller government and less governmental control, and I'm glad that we as Americans can choose whether or not we want to home school our children. With that being said, it's a lot of responsibility for a parent to take on themselves.

I was home schooled, as were most of my siblings, and I think that it really depends on the parents. Some parents actually teach their kids, spend the time with them, offer some sort of direction, and I think it can really give those kids a great start to life and a positive outlook towards learning.

My parents, on the other hand, didn't really put the effort necessary into teaching us, and as a result I didn't learn to read until I was almost 12, and than only because my mother finally put me into public school. Reading, writing, basic math, history, geography, you name it, I was missing it from my education. My poor 5th and 6th grade teachers had a heck of a time trying to catch me up to the other students. That doesn't do a whole lot for a kid's confidence, when he can see that he is obviously and severely behind academically compared to his peers. I just thought I was stupid. My mom thought I had dyslexia or something. Turns out I just needed someone to sit down with me and actually teach me.

There's also a lot of social development that takes place at school, and most of the time you can tell when a kid is home schooled by the way they interact with people. Or maybe it's just me, coming from that background, I can usually tell when I'm talking to a home schooler, they often have a certain social awkwardness about them. I know I was the same way until I met my wife and she straightened me out. I often had a hard time appropriately regulating the volume of my voice ("do you realize how loudly you're talking?), or knowing when certain things were inappropriate to say under specific social circumstances. And I totally fail at Trivial Pursuit (we didn't watch a lot of TV growing up either.)

Having said all that, I finished my college degree early, graduated with honors, and am a successful software engineer and wannabe entrepreneur. I have a strong hunger to learn, a well developed sense of curiosity, and I have a knack for teaching myself new skills. I don't know if I am who I am because I was home schooled (although you could probably make a pretty good case for it due to my unstructured upbringing), and given my success in life I don't mean to sound unappreciative. It just would have been nice to be able to read a little earlier in life, that's all. And I'm still not very good at math.
"Watson"

From article: The games are played at IBM's "Watson Research Center" in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. ... about the size of eight refrigerators -- is seen behind a glass window while the two human contestants are at podiums.
It's not the article writer in particular, the article is basically fine in other respects, it's people in general. I see far more people using "osmosis" more often than "diffusion", despite almost never using it correctly.

For example, those "Learning through osmosis" signs in libraries, articles, shirts, etc. absolutely abound. It clearly isn't working if you think that's osmosis. Or there are tons of services with quotes like this: http://www.languagetutoring.co.uk/LearningThroughOsmosis.htm...

Evidently they aren't tutoring science.

Osmosis vs diffusion is not difficult to understand. It just seems people use it to sound smarter, and thus fail miserably 99% of the time.
We (geeks) are immersed in technology and have no idea of the disconnect between our perception of the interface and the "farmville" population.

Once in a while, specially when I get flustered at family members who can't tell the difference between the browser, email, and what-not ("the internet"), I find it useful to remind myself of my initial encounter with the 'machine' (15 yrs old, few decades ago). The distinction between the OS, command line, and the actual application (the Star Trek game on a terminal system) was entirely lost on me: The paradigm of a layered system simply was not in my conceptual toolkit and it was initially a completely seamless experience.
These Steve Blank stories always get to the heart of the matter. What was particularly interesting about this one was that early sales were to friends and close contacts, totally skipping the "customer discovery" step.

My favorite line is Note that most VP of Sales’ have world-class antenna for career danger.
I find it really interesting that so many people hear what they want to hear in his talks.

People on both sides of the talent vs hard-work debate are posting here using his books and lectures as support.

Personally, I'm in the "work matters more than talent" camp. so of course, that's what I remember from his work :-)

[edit: clarification]
"Whenever I see a brilliant kid decide to join Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, or Google, I think to myself: a startup just died"

What does mere dumb brilliance have to do with creating a successful startup? I thought it had more to do with stamina, discipline, luck, persistence, flexibility, hunger, vision etc.

If that brilliant kid is more interested in working for a big company, maybe it just means that they were smart enough to realize that they weren't cut out for the ramen life.
On Kids, Parenting and the Real Time Web
The ideal startup career path
I cook steak in a vacuum-sealed bag submerged in a water bath held with a PID controller at precisely 131f, then sear them in a cast iron pan with just-barely-smoking peanut oil for about 30 seconds a side. Nobody has flown cross-country for my cooking, but the Chicago HN'ers should do a dinner sometime.
Break Media Acquires FileFront
Ask HN: What are the most useful iphone apps you have?
I just recently bought an iphone and was wondering which apps other users find the most useful? In particular I'm thinking about budget, fitness, and notes apps. Maybe something that syncs with google docs.
Yeah, I know it does happen occasionally. It just amused me that he listed it in first position, no less (and I'm sure he did it for that very reason ;) ).

As common as water damage may be, it is probably a rounding error compared to less spectacular failures such as dying disk drives and PSUs.

Regardless, that datacenter flood video is absolutely priceless. Thanks for that!
What you really want to do is move to Argentina, where an 8:30AM steak is perfectly normal.
I read this with a cringe the whole time. I actually found it a little depressing. I just want to say "Really...?! REALLY?!"

It's easy to write these kind of users off as idiots, but this reminds me that any time you mess with a users' interface by trying to improve it, you have to tread carefully, or you'll confuse the kind of folks that can't tell the difference between a random blog and the #2 website in the world (and who get there by typing "Facebook login" into "the internet").

I can't even try to make a serious comment without a tinge of bitter sarcasm. This disappoints me way more than something like this should. It's so irrational to care that much.

But they're just so frustratingly dumb.
As Americans who live in Argentina and who also homeschool, we've had no end to the social pressure to not do so. This as we are actually attending school, but only half-day, and homeschooling the other half. I've learned a lot about the ways in which individuals who live in societies with a significant amount of thought control find it personally offensive when you tell them your reasons for homeschool.

It pushes at taboos in terms of acceptable channels for dissemination of information; it feels uncontrollable; it causes fear related to one's own children, if any; and the list goes on.
You're perhaps seen this before, but per the commentary at the end of this posting of it: "Note carefully the first letter of the first 7 paragraphs."

It can't be an accident.
Not to mention that startups can't do everything a company the size of Google can (such as start their own ISP providing gigabit service).

There is a place in our society for all shapes and sizes of companies.
Button Board - Surf the web with only your mouse
Using this site, you can do some basic web surfing using only your mouse.

Use Button Board If:
1) You are eating a sandwich with one hand.
2) You have a touch screen.
3) You hooked up a PC to your TV and only have a wireless mouse.
4) You want to avoid any keyboard phishing.
5) Your keyboard just broke.
6) You have a movement disability that makes the use of a regular keyboard difficult.
7) You can't see your keyboard because it's dark and you can't touch type.
Ask HN: I got an intro to a VC, but am not ready to pitch. Now what?
A conversation with a buddy turned into an email introduction ("vc meet buddy, buddy meet vc") to a vc, but we're still a month or two out from being ready for a pitch. should i...

a) leave the email be for now, and respond when we're ready
b) send an honest "we're thrilled for the introduction, but aren't ready to talk just yet, can we email you when we are?"
c) try to start a dialog more so than a pitch, get his input on the idea, and develop a relationship
You're noticing the difference in the texture of the salt, not the flavor of the salt. You'll do just as well with kosher salt, which is significantly cheaper than sea salt (and, more importantly, comes in bigger containers).

I have a small bag of fleur de sel (we call it "crunchy salt") which I use to finish things, but again, it's for the texture. I wouldn't say I've found any incredible difference in salt flavor.
This also shows that the phishing page doesn't even have to look like the original page. An username and a password field would do the trick.
The time-of-day/voting pattern is something that occurred to me too. But the scientifically sound way of verifying this would be to look at the ratio of successful items and the submission rate for different times of the day.

This attempt with a single post might falsify our hunch (ie, it might attract the same no of votes later in the day), but chances are that that would be because it wasn't your best post ever...
Why did your parents decide to home school you, and what made your mother decide to put you back into the public school system? Did your siblings go back at the same time, if at all? Did they have the same challenges relating to basic skills?
That's interesting. I do use google reader but not twitter.

What does Twitter bring you that google reader cannot?
This is not a "black and white" issue with one true answer. You have to see this in the historic context.

One of the reasons why the first German democracy (1918-1933) failed (and gave rise to Hitler) is because the German society was very much compartmentalized and split into "subcultures" at the time. In fact, large parts of the military chose to continue as "para-military" units after the end of WWI. These violent groups that saw themselves as above the law played a significant part in Hitler's ascent to power.

When the current Germany was designed after WWII, many safeguards were built into the system to ensure that there would be no more "parallel" societies. Two obvious examples are 1) the universal draft (flow all parts of society through the military to prevent the military from isolating itself) and 2) no home schooling (the public schools serve to promote democracy and western values; the public school system is designed to be the "melting pot" that integrates immigrants and fringe groups).

How would you feel about this case if the home schooling did not involve Christians (Note: I'm not religious myself.), but radical Moslems? What if it were about Nazis indoctrinating their kids with hate? What if it were about a sect that raises their kids to prepare for a collective suicide?

The German (mainstream) belief is that the government has to step in in these cases. It has to protect the kids from their own parents.

The family that was granted asylum may very well be fine parents and teachers (I don't know them), but for obvious reasons you can't have an effective law that says "you may only homeschool kids for Christian reasons, but other choices are not ok".

So, the German society, under consideration of its history, chooses to err on the safe side: no homeschooling. Period.

Of course, the particular circumstances may very much differ for other societies, so that other societies may reasonably come up with different rules (e.g., the US). But that does not invalidate the reasoning behind the German laws.
There are a bunch of advantages to the non-startup route:

- Weekends are yours.

- Guaranteed good pay. After ~4 years at MSFT, I was making nicely north of $200k gross. As a developer. In 2004 dollars --- it's probably more now.

- There are technical people more experienced than you, interested in mentoring your growth. I used to joke as a hiring manager that you could tell quickly in an interview how long someone had been in the startup pit because they had learned no new concepts (only new technology) since they started.

Why would anyone technical who doesn't explicitly want the startup experience do it these days? It's not like the mad IPO cash-out and low corporate pay days of the late 90s / early 00s.
The Information Divide Between Traditional And New Media
The whole thread descending from here is an excellent example of what I mean by corner-cases and memorization. :)
Who in the government decides for what things citizens can be deprived of their personal freedom (i.e. arrested)? Who in the government decides when it is legally permissible to confiscate citizens' property (i.e. taxation, eminent domain)? Who in the government decides when it is permissible to force its citizens to force its citizens to attempt to kill other people (i.e. impose a draft)?
Ask HN: Best back-tweet tracker? Tweetmeme is killing topsy/backtype
I'm looking for a way to grab and display all tweets linking back to a given URL. Backtype and Topsy both claim to do this, while Tweetmeme will tell you how many tweets link to a URL but not give you the tweets.

This is unfortunate because Tweetmeme appears superior to the other two:

Comparison:
http://tc50tweets.techcrunch.com/story/556640499/tribune-co-sued-by-patent-troll-for-10-million-over-how-it-links-to-stuff-windycitizencom

http://topsy.com/tb/www.windycitizen.com/chicago/business/2010/02/10/tribune-co-sued-by-patent-troll-10-million-over-how-links-to-stuff

http://www.backtype.com/connect/www.windycitizen.com%25252fchicago%25252fbusiness%25252f2010%25252f02%25252f10%25252ftribune-co-sued-by-patent-troll-10-million-over-how-links-to-stuff

Tweetmeme found 14 tweets linking to that URL while the other two services only returned 3.

Tweetmeme doesn't let me grab those tweets programmatically. Are there any other services that return 14 who will?
Links to books that have shaped my thinking on this issue:

http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html

I'm homeschooling four children. I try to cooperate with my friendly local public schools not only in meeting Minnesota's regulatory requirements, but also in offering to provide American Mathematics Competition

http://www.unl.edu/amc/index.shtml

and other math coaching opportunities to public school students throughout my community, some gratis and some on a nonprofit, cost-recovery basis. My community volunteer work consists mostly in being president of a statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to improving education of gifted learners in our state, most of the members of which are parents of children enrolled in public (that is, state-run) schools.

What got me interested in homeschooling was FLEXIBILITY. My oldest son would not have had the opportunity to take formal classes in C programming at middle school age in any public school I am aware of in Minnesota. He did make use of a state-run accelerated math program,

http://mathcep.umn.edu/umtymp/

but he got ready for that through a distance learning program that I found for him as a homeschooling parent.

http://epgy.stanford.edu/courses/math/

He developed a deep interest in literary writing, which is now leading to a start-up project he is coding for, through acquaintance with another family in our homeschooling support group, who have a daughter who is very advanced in writing.

It's best to leave the educational system as flexible as possible, to meet as many learner needs as possible. One size doesn't fit all, and parents ought to be able to shop for as many different models of primary and secondary education as they are able to shop for of automobiles or computers or foodstuffs.
No one except the physically fit, expert public speakers.
I think the reason so many VCs think the VC business needs to shrink is not that there' some limit on the number of startups, but because of a historical accident that caused the VC business to bloat suddenly. The bubble of the late 90s caused a great increase in the number of VC firms, and many of the new arrivals were incompetent. When VCs say the VC business is going to shrink, it's largely a tactful way of saying that those firms are going to get GCed.
You're not crazy, but if you're serious, you basically need to avoid all commercial meat, both because nobody's guaranteed that things like BPA haven't leached into your food before it arrives on the shelves, and because commercial meat is exposed to worse things than plasticizers.
So, should I make sure that my kids aren't black hat before trusting them? :)
It may be good to add some more detail to the "Who we are" section.

The names and expertise are fine, but perhaps something on the projects/companies these people have worked with. How much experience they have in the respective fields. E.g who is into economics, who is into technology etc.

If you have founded (or funded) any startups, perhaps that can be mentioned. It would make you seem more accessible.

In case of YC, PGs views and history where well understood and respected. You may want to highlight what value you bring to the table (other than the money).
Great.
This is a usability improvement.
And could be used to defend against key loggers.
Ruby Library for Google Buzz
Google Buzz: A visual tour (slideshow)
I hope they realize the huge responsibility they took upon themselves.

Home schooling kids is a full-time job, specially if you have more than one. I cannot imagine they being able to give adequate attention and educational resources to five kids.

Since many of the respondents in this discussion have been raised this way, I would ask what is the reason for such extraordinary effort.
"Chicago HN'ers should do a dinner sometime"

Sounds like a good idea to me. I cooked a 15lbs kobe beef brisket last weekend and had more meat than people to share it with.
You're very welcome.

A lot of this is just common sense and thinking things through ... you've already made the only step that really matters, which is taking the issue seriously and proactively.

Good luck, and if you have any specific questions in the future I'm always game; my email is in my HN profile.
Well, see e.g. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Chinese_(Mandarin)/Pinyin_Pronu... - under 'Pronounciation Basics'. I'm not a native English speaker, but speaking Russian, English and Norwegian I find it generally true.

(And yes as remarked below my first exposure to the language was in Taiwan, but the courses I follow are not Taiwan specific)
Maybe this is true at Google, but you need a fair amount of dedication to stick around at Goldman or McKinsey. Nobody becomes a career middle manager there. Well, maybe some back-office jobs at GS.
Do you seriously believe, for one instant, that a government organization will make decisions that lessen the power and influence of that government in society? Government officials will tend towards decisions that give the government more reasons to increase the scope of government, and towards shaping of children's beliefs and world views to conform to the main stream of thought of government employees.

I know that you say that government power should be "monitored closely" as a solution to this possibility. But who watches the watchers?

In general, I am deeply troubled by the European Human Rights commission protecting the rights of "society" in this case, rather than the rights of individuals. I personally believe that the rights and dignity of individual human beings is one of the greatest advances in human history, and that chipping away at those rights and returning more power to "society" is a grave error.
No, the flavor. Unrefined salts tend to carry loads of random minerals from the source, which lend their flavors to whatever you use it on.

I'm not a big salt-flavor fan, so I effectively never have salt pieces on anything. The texture doesn't exist in any salt I use, as it's all dissolved.

edit: finally found it. Redmond RealSalt, all the big grocery stores near me carry it. ~6.50 for 26 oz, so for my uses that's 6.50 for a year of salt usage, if not more.
1. Buy Auber Instruments SV controller @ ~$120.

2. Buy mechanically-switched Black & Decker rice cooker @ $40.

3. Buy Seal-a-Meal vacuum sealer @ $40.

4. Buy two aged rib-eye steaks.

5. Pat steaks dry, salt liberally, pepper.

6. Seal steaks in a single vacuum-sealed bag with 1 tbsp of butter for each steak.

7. Set Auber PID controller for 131f.

8. Put sealed steaks in the bottom of the rice cooker. Fill with water.

9. Ensure that the thermal probe from the PID controller is in the water.

10. Ensure that the rice cooker is plugged into the PID controller, and the PID controller into the wall.

11. Walk away for 4 hours.

12. Heat peanut oil in a skillet until shimmering.

13. Remove steaks from water bath. Pat dry. Oil should be just-smoking.

14. Sear steaks on both sides, 30-40 seconds per side.

15. Rest meat 10-15 minutes.

16. Serve.
Buzzkill
Designer Alexander McQueen kills self
Denmark is also considering it.

Yes, there's a difference, but it's still very wrong.

We're talking about governments buying illegally obtained information, thus sanctioning the crime. How is this different from the government not being allowed to wire-tap its citizens, but if they go on the black market and get a black-hat to do it, it's suddenly OK? The only reason is the presence of an international border.
Are you in favor of expanding the governments ability and proclivity to do the things you list, or do you think it better if the ability of governments to do those things were further curtailed?

(Your answer, of course, will depend on the government you are living under, and the extent to which they can or cannot do those things currently.)
Actually, that OMM link reminds me of the developer commentary in Valve's games (the people behind OMM write for Valve), such as Portal. Quite often they explain the thought processes behind areas of the map. I think the free Lost Coast tech demo explains a lot about the fundamentals.

Looking through my collection of links, I've found this one which is pretty good at describing how to pace a level. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4024/examining_game_pa...
First, a bunch of jokers attempt a YC clone with IAccelerator and now another bunch of jokers manage to do it even worse.

"You aren't a gift, you're a business- your business is making entrepreneurs think you can further their business. Your website is unprofessional and doesn't mention who you are, and who you are is the most important."

Engrave this on a wall and read it aloud every day.

"It's all because of an attitude which is typical to Indian pseudo-VCs. They think they are doing startup-ists[sic] a big favour by investing in them."

Amen! And we wonder why the world laughs at us. I am an Indian developer and all I can say to this "venture firm" is .. I wouldn't be caught dead within a 100 miles of you.
I would love to see who would, really.

YC works because of PG and his team, not the 20 k $ (or whatever the amount is these days) that they invest in a startup. Unless you have a fraction of the credibility he brings to the table, you have no business being a YC "inspired" firm.
But people do translate names. Since you're Russian, I'll give this example: What do English speakers call a Саша? Why, usually, it's not Sasha - it's Alex.